


Red by association

by rudesunyoung



Category: BLACKPINK (Band)
Genre: Angst, Assassins & Hitmen, Blood and Injury, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Past Relationship(s), Recurring flashbacks, Torture, Violence, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:29:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 35,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21911470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rudesunyoung/pseuds/rudesunyoung
Summary: The problem with running away from your past is that you never really outrun it. It just finds a way to catch up to you. Lisa learns that the hard way.
Relationships: Jennie Kim/Lalisa Manoban | Lisa
Comments: 67
Kudos: 108





	1. hide and seek

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE heed the tags

Lisa stares at the laminated copy of the ultrasound picture next to the bedside lamp. Chaeyoung had mentioned something about buying a photo album from Daiso to put the picture in so it wouldn't get ruined but Lisa liked where it was now. The baby was too small to make out in the photo on top of the grainy image of the film; it was almost impossible to point out where any part of her was at but Chaeyoung could. She knew the exact measurement, where the baby's head and feet were, and how much it weighed. Lisa chuckled when she thought back to three days ago when she had gone to her first appointment and found out.

_Fingers glided down the slope of her nose before coming to rest on the swell of her bottom lip. Lisa woke to the curtains pulled back and sunlight flooding the bedroom, bathing the sheets in a warm shade of yellow and creating shadows from the blinds onto the comforter. When she finally focused her eyes to the fingers on her lips, she followed the path of the individual's arm, all the way up to the slant of her shoulder before catching Chaeyoung's gaze._

_"G'morning," she smiled tiredly and reached up to hold her wrist in her hand, tracing her lips over her knuckles._

_With her other hand, Chaeyoung reached forward to run her fingers through Lisa's unruly bangs, watching them stick back up after she tried to smooth them down before finally giving up with a huff._

_"Did you sleep alright?"_

_Lisa hummed and closed her eyes as those same fingers moved into her hair and started to lightly scratch her scalp in a soothing motion. "Where did you go? I missed your freezing hands underneath my shirt," she chuckled._

_As the fingers continued their ministrations in her scalp, Chaeyoung was silent, watching her closely until Lisa opened one of her eyes and then shifted in the bed so she could sit up against the headboard. The blanket fell down to her waist and with that, Chaeyoung crawled onto the bed, situating herself until she was in Lisa's lap and winding her arms behind her neck._

_"I didn't brush my teeth yet," Lisa mumbled underneath her breath, knowing Chaeyoung's distaste for kisses before either of them brushed their teeth, but she didn't really have much time to think about that before Chaeyoung leaned forward to kiss her. It starts out slow with just a light brush of their lips against each other until Lisa brings her hands around Chaeyoung's waist and tightens her hold before she pulls back._

_Lisa follows her lips, kissing the edge of her mouth and trailing small pecks down the length of her jawline until Chaeyoung laughs and holds her face in her hands so she can look at her._

_"I have to tell you something," she murmurs._

_"Yeah, what is it?"_

_"Do you remember the appointment I had today? About-about the in vitro?"_

_Lisa rubs her thighs in a comforting motion, her fingers only slightly shaking before Chaeyoung puts two fingers underneath her chin and tilts her head upward. They just stare at each other for a long time, not saying anything as Lisa tries to control how quickly her heart is beating, as she tries not to bite her entire bottom lip off with how hard her teeth are sinking into the flesh._

_Neither of them say it out loud, but they desperately want this to finally work because Lisa doesn’t know how much longer she can sit on the bathroom floor and watch Chaeyoung cry so hard that she shakes._

_Before Lisa can say anything, Chaeyoung reaches into the back of her slacks to pull out what looks like a small card before turning it over and pressing it into her chest. She gestures with her eyes for her to look at it and Lisa takes a deep breath, reaching for it and only breaking eye contact so she can stare at the grainy picture of the ultrasound. It looks like a blob, a small pea-sized blob in the middle of the picture but it makes Lisa cry. It makes her cry so hard that she can barely breathe, that snot clogs her nostrils until she can taste it on her lips._

Nothing much had changed in that short amount of time, Chaeyoung wasn't even showing yet but she just had this easy glow about her now that Lisa was starting to see. She sang more whenever she did the laundry; when she would paint in her studio, she stayed longer and got more pieces finished; she talked more even if it was just about the smallest things like the cat in the windowsill or the woman she met while taking the bus in the morning.

Lisa smiled to herself as she left the room and padded towards the living room, the sound of the TV drowning out her thoughts when she spotted Chaeyoung on the couch with Lily at her feet chewing on a plastic cheeseburger. 

"Are you hungry?" 

Chaeyoung hummed and twisted around the back of the couch to point at the groceries that were still sitting unpacked on the counter. 

"Yes. I bought a box of pancake batter and fruit and some milk. Can you make it? Please?" she smiled cutely. 

"When are you going to learn to cook?" Lisa said and rolled her eyes although there was no malice behind her words and began taking the things out of the bags. 

"Yah!" Chaeyoung laughed. "I'm carrying your baby, isn't that enough already?"

Lisa snorted as she got to work on breakfast. It didn't take long to make the pancakes. After mixing the batter in a bowl, she waited for the pan on the stove to heat up just as Leo came into the kitchen, nosing at her leg. 

"What?"

Leo meowed before walking through her legs and jumping onto the counter, stepping on the empty box of pancake batter as Lisa tried to keep him away from the stove. Chaeyoung strolled in a little while later with Lily in her arms before setting her down and helped to cut up the fruit before plating it in small bowls and carrying it to the table. After finishing the pancakes, Lisa grabbed the large bottle of maple syrup and the stick of butter in the fridge before following after her girlfriend. 

"Thank you for making the food," Chaeyoung and leaned across the table to kiss Lisa, forgoing the maple syrup and grabbing the small tube of ketchup to spread on top of her pancakes. 

"Oh my _god_ -" Lisa groaned and nearly gagged when Chaeyoung ripped off a huge piece before shoving it in her mouth and dipping the slice of mango in the ketchup and eating that as well. 

"Are you serious right now?"

"What?" Chaeyoung raised an eyebrow. "Jealous? You want some too?" and she had the nerve to reach across the table like she was actually going to spread it on her girlfriend's plate before Lisa yelped and almost flipped out of her chair at how fast she scooted back.

"Don't play!"

Chaeyoung laughed loudly, a hand coming up to cover her mouth and went back to her food while looking up with a teasing look in her eyes until Lisa scooted her chair forward with a frown. 

"I don't even have an appetite anymore."

"More for me, I guess," she shrugged and stabbed her pancake with a fork before placing it on her own plate and grabbing the bottle of ketchup and the bowl of fruit to move into the living room. "Can you get me some water, babe?" 

Lisa just sat there with her jaw slack and her arms at her side watching Chaeyoung's back until she took her usual spot on the couch and she could hear her laughter from whatever was playing on the TV. 

"Un-fucking-believable," Lisa shook her head and groaned loudly when Chaeyoung called her again.

* * *

"I just need to pick up the mail and grab a few things outside. I'll be back in like thirty minutes..." Lisa said glancing down at her watch after she finished tying up her laces on her Nikes. 

She stood up as Chaeyoung came back out of the bathroom with her toothbrush in her mouth and held it out with foam clinging to her lips. "Can you get some more laundry detergent? We're almost out," and when she nodded, Chaeyoung turned back around and went into the bathroom. 

Lisa heard her spit followed by the sound of the faucet running until she came back out and followed her girlfriend to the front door. 

"And can you get more ketchup? And the sour cream and onion chips? You know the ones in the black b-"

Lisa leaned down to kiss her lips and kept kissing her until Chaeyoung responded and pushed her back slightly to frown. "Hey, did you hear what I sa-"

Lisa kissed her again and laughed against her lips when Chaeyoung squeaked but couldn't resist kissing her back. 

"Yes," she breathed between the both of them and kissed her top lip. "The ones in the black bag with the cartoon wolf on the front. I know, I know."

Before Chaeyoung had even known she was pregnant, she had developed an obsession with the chips, eating at least three bags a day until Lisa told her that she probably needed to limit her intake. She had only let her eat one a day, which had evolved into a long argument that made Chaeyoung cry and forced Lisa to sleep on the couch for two days. Needless to say, those chips brought up bad memories for her, but Chaeyoung claimed that she couldn't go a day without them so it was inevitable that a bag was always lying around the apartment somewhere. 

"Whatever," Chaeyoung huffed and pushed the hair behind her ear before stepping back and opening the door for her. "Just hurry back and be careful."

"I'm just going to the supply store," Lisa said and laughed when Chaeyoung made a face and almost closed the door on her before she placed her foot in the jam, stopping it from closing all the way. 

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding!"

"One day you're gonna kid yourself out of this relationship," Chaeyoung rolled her eyes and Lisa scoffed in disbelief, both of them staring at each other until they started laughing. 

"My kid is in there," Lisa said poking her stomach lightly and smiling as Chaeyoung tried to swat her hand away halfheartedly. "Wherever you go, I go."

"I seriously can't with you right now," Chaeyoung whined before pouting and slapping her arm. "Just go already and..." she stepped closer and quickly kissed her on the mouth. "Both of us love you."

Lisa didn't even have time to tell her that she loved them too or smile stupidly at her girlfriend before she closed the door shut in her face. But it was alright, because as she took the stairs to the lobby, she smiled to herself and kept replaying those words over and over again in her head.

* * *

The supply store was only a block and a half away from their apartment complex so Lisa walked the way there, playing Panda Pop on her phone as she took the familiar route. The summer heat makes her white t-shirt stick slightly to her back and Lisa curses herself for not taking Chaeyoung's sunglasses when she offered them to her.

 _It's hot out there and your eyes will get irritated_ , Lisa had only scoffed and disagreed, _I won't even be out there long, I'm fine._

She shields her eyes as she waits at the crosswalk for the light to change along with a few other people, two girls that are talking to each other and a man in a tailored business suit with his phone pressed to his ear. When the light changes and everyone begins crossing, Lisa adjusts the strap of her bag on her shoulder and walks down the street, passing the ahjumma who sells tangerines and persimmons out of the crate and waving slightly as she smiles. 

The supply store is not entirely crowded, a few people shopping for some things and Lisa grabs a basket by the door, immediately going to the condiment aisle so she doesn't forget and end up getting into another argument with Chaeyoung that would ultimately end with her crying. She internally cringes at that thought and places two bottles of ketchup in the basket and then goes to grab the chips and the packet of laundry detergent that Chaeyoung always gets. 

After spending five minutes walking around and looking for pads, Lisa finds the aisle grabs a pack, remembering that her period should be coming next week and then heads to check out. While waiting at the register, Lisa glances at a display rack off to the side with baby booties hanging by their laces in a multitude of colors. At first, she just chuckles and after looking away and seeing the man in front of her pay for his things, she turns back around and can't help but to reach for the cream colored ones, pulling them off the display to examine them. They're so small that both of them fit in the palm of one of her hands and they're so soft that she can't help but stroke the material. 

When she hears someone cough, she looks up to see the cashier smiling softly at her and Lisa can feel how red her ears turn before she places the booties on the conveyor belt and watch it gather ahead with the rest of her things. After paying for her things, the cashier congratulates her and Lisa mutters back a quiet thanks and gathers the bags to place one in her tote and the other, on her arm.

 _On my way home_ Lisa texts Chaeyoung as she walks out of the store.

Chaeyoung doesn’t respond right away which means that she must have fallen asleep already or is working in her studio. Once she starts on a painting, it's usually all she does for the day; on some days she could spend hours in her studio and only come out to get something to eat or drink and use the bathroom. Lisa shook her head and pocketed her phone before crossing the street and making her way back home. As she was moving out of the way of a kid riding his bike, she bumped into a man, almost stumbling off the sidewalk and had to grab the pole before looking over her shoulder at the asshole who hadn't even said a simple excuse me. 

He caught her eyes, a blank look on his face and studied her for a moment, before facing forward and walking ahead. Lisa blew her bangs out of her eyes and stood up to try to see where he was going but as the sidewalk became crowded, she struggled to find the back of his white shirt as he disappeared into the swarm of people. 

“Dick,” she muttered and adjusted the bag on her arm before walking off. 

When she saw her apartment complex up ahead, she thought of that guy's face and the scar that ran from his ear to the edge of his jawline and those dark, blank eyes that left an unsettling taste in her mouth. 

She tried to shake it off and she did, for the most part; picking up the mail in the lobby downstairs and waving at the kids that played soccer at the bottom of the stairs. One of the little girls kicked it in her direction and she passed it back to her with a chuckle. 

As she made it to the second floor, she could hear a song playing from one of the nearby units and it was so loud that she could pick up on some of the lyrics. When she made it to her unit at the end of the hallway, she slid the screen up to type in the passcode and reached for the doorknob, only to have the door fall open slightly before she could grab it. 

Lisa froze. 

Her fingers curled into her palm as she thought of why the door would be open, knowing that the door automatically locked if it was closed. She waited for two seconds before pushing the door open the rest of the way and walking quietly into the apartment. Their shoes were still in their place on the rack, the TV still on from what she could hear from the entrance, and upon walking further, she saw the plates from breakfast still at the table from earlier. 

"Baby?" Lisa called out. 

She took a deep breath and walked further into the apartment, turning to go into the kitchen and set the bags down so she could find out what Chaeyoung was up to until she froze in her tracks. Just underneath one of the stools behind the island, Lily laid on the tile floor, a pool of blood underneath her that trailed all the way from the pantry like she had dragged herself there before dying in this very spot. 

The bags on her arms immediately slipped, clattering to the floor as she ran out of the kitchen and threw open the door to the bedroom, yelling for Chaeyoung and cursing when she wasn't in the bathroom either. As she ran down the hallway, she almost broke the knob on the door with how roughly she threw it open before movement caught her eye and she turned around to see Chaeyoung in a chair next to the window. Her legs were tied together in front of her and her arms bound to the back of the chair, but she couldn't even talk because duct tape had been placed on her mouth. She looked scared. So scared that before Lisa could even reach out and untie the rope from around her, she felt a heavy object hit her on the back of her head. It made her shout before she fell face forward onto the carpet, her eyes trying to focus on Chaeyoung until she felt herself black out.

* * *

When Lisa came to she blinked up slowly at the ceiling, the fan gradually coming into focus until she could see the sunlight reflecting off the paint on the wall. Her head was throbbing and she felt disoriented. Lisa took a deep breath as she felt the wet trickle of blood down the back of her neck. She blinked twice, trying to make sense of her surroundings and where she was before she noticed the cup of paint brushes on the floor. Paint cans had toppled over, some of it staining the carpet in shades of brown and yellow. The easel that Chaeyoung had probably been working on was upside down and ripped apart. At the thought of Chaeyoung, Lisa jolted but found herself unable to move where she was bound to the chair. She thrashed around trying to pull herself free or rip the ties apart, but it was no use and the more frustrated she became, the more her worry began to grow. 

"Chaeyoung!" she yelled. "Chaeyoung!"

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something move from the other side of the room. She blinked twice, trying to get her eyes to focus until the person lifted their head up and she was able to make eye contact with her girlfriend. 

Chaeyoung looked exhausted, her eyebrow above her left eye was bleeding and her clothing was slightly ripped, the sleeve of her Real Madrid jersey torn and the front covered with droplets of blood. Her hair was wild like someone had dragged her by it and Lisa felt tears prickle in her eyes as she threw herself against the restraints and tried desperately to get herself free. 

"I'm gonna get us out of here, okay? Don't worry, I'm gonna get us out," Lisa whispered.

Chaeyoung nodded slowly, her eyes following Lisa as she looked around the room and tried to see anything that might help her cut the rope. 

It was incredibly tight around her torso, almost making it hard to breathe, but she clenched her teeth and attempted to wiggle her hands out of the rope around her wrist but the more she tried, the more the material rubbed against her skin, causing her to wince. 

"Just hold on okay? I've….almost….got it" she grunted. 

Chaeyoung looked like she was nodding her head but Lisa couldn’t be quite sure because it was hard to make out anything from where she was sitting. 

When Lisa tried to pull her right hand out, the rope cut across her skin, causing her to shut her eyes and bite her tongue as she felt the harsh material cut into her skin. 

"Fuck!" she winced and continued to pull her hand out, the rope cutting deeper until she had to stop and take a deep breath. 

She threw herself against the restraints again, but didn't have time to stop herself before the chair tipped over to the side and she went crashing to the floor. Her head smacked against the carpet, causing her to clench her jaw in pain before she blinked up at Chaeyoung who was staring at her with wide eyes. The older girl tried to untangle herself from the rope around her torso almost immediately but Lisa shook her head. 

"Don't. Don't-the baby," she whispered.

Before Chaeyoung could respond, they both turned their heads at the sound of the door opening. A pair of footsteps slowly made their way inside of the room until Lisa felt her chair being lifted upright into place and Chaeyoung's eyes closing as she crumbled into tears. 

Her whole body was shaking and Lisa felt her jaw clench when two men walked into view, one of them tall with his head shaved and a piercing in his nose and the other, only a head shorter with dark black hair. Both of the men were dressed in dark slacks and a white button-up shirt with skinny ties, but the taller one had his sleeves rolled up to the bend of his elbow and only then did Lisa notice the blood on his knuckles. Chaeyoung was still crying but Lisa had to blink a few times in order to focus on both of them as she felt herself become lightheaded most likely due to the amount of blood that she had loss. 

The taller man took one look at her before turning his attention to Chaeyoung and Lisa immediately struggled in the chair as he took a step towards her. 

"Keep your fucking hands off of her!"

He spun around on the balls of his feet, lifting his hands in the air with a small smile on his face almost as if he was teasing. 

"I wasn't going to touch her," he said and looked briefly at Chaeyoung before folding his arms across his chest. "I just thought I would wipe her tears, a pretty girl like that doesn't deserve to cry, right?"

"Fuck off!" Lisa spat and before she could react, a punch was thrown to the side of her head, jolting her in the opposite direction. The pain was immediate. She tried to blink her eyes and flex her jaw to make sure that it wasn’t broken, but she could feel her mouth slowly filling with blood as she winced and spit out some, staining the carpet with the red fluid. 

She heard Chaeyoung whimper and once she was able to lift her head back up, she blinked a few times and stared back at her, nodding her head to let her know she was okay. 

The shorter guy was rotating his wrist, the rings on his fingers glittering underneath the natural light as Lisa looked at him. The taller of the two patted him on the back before clapping his hands and pointing right at Lisa. 

"Now I know, I know you have some questions," he sighed and rubbed his chin as if he was thinking over it for a minute. "You're probably wondering what we're doing here and who we are, but I promise we'll make this short and be out of your hair in a little bit."

He hummed as he looked around the room, his eyes surveying the damage as if they both weren't the ones who had created this mess. Lisa kept her eyes on Chaeyoung and tried to somehow convey to her that it was alright and that she had to stop crying, but she could only do so much and it was hardly convincing considering the state she herself was in. 

The snap of fingers broke their moment and both girls looked at the taller man as he turned back around and sighed. "At some point, you make it hard for us to be sympathetic towards you when you were warned about the repercussions of your actions."

Chaeyoung looked confused but Lisa rotated her jaw as she took a breath through her nose and tried to keep herself upright. The shorter man took down one of the paintings on the wall, a still life that Chaeyoung had done of a pitcher of water on the table, and examined it before dropping it to the floor. 

"You remember that, right? Those kinds of consequences, surely you do," he chuckled and put his hands in his pockets.

As he walked toward Lisa, he moved his head from side to side as if he was thinking to himself before laughing out loud. 

"I can't think of anyone that would be so reckless as to not only risk their life, but someone else for something this stupid," he chuckled and shook his head. "Right, Seun?"

The shorter man turned around and nodded his head before staring at Lisa and reaching into his pocket to pull out a gold pocket watch. He popped the clasp open before turning it around and showing her the symbol of a red bloodhound with Korean inscription along the long hand of the clock. 

Lisa felt her blood go cold and a ringing sound pierced her eardrums as she stared at the pocket watch. Seun chuckled and turned the watch back to himself before closing it and slipping it back into his pocket, but Lisa couldn't stop staring at him. She felt goosebumps rise on her skin and almost immediately started throwing herself against the restraints, struggling to pull her hands free even as she felt the material cutting deeper into her skin. When she couldn't get herself free, she screamed, tears welling in her eyes as she tried to blink them away, but it was of no use. 

"No, no, no. Don't do that," the taller one shook his head. "Don't embarrass yourself like that."

Lisa looked at Chaeyoung and she had started crying again, her attempts to pull her own arms free useless as Lisa could see her wrists starting to turn a nasty shade of red.

"You had to have known that it would come to this eventually, right? That you wouldn't be able to slip away so easily, hm?"

Lisa looked up at the ceiling, blinking back the moisture in her eyes and attempted to pull her wrists out again but she could feel the blood starting to run down her fingers. 

"Please," she finally whispered. "Please...just let her go, okay? Let her go."

When she looked back at Chaeyoung, she was staring at her with that same scared look in her eyes but she was confused, her eyebrows twitching slightly. 

"Just let her go and do whatever you want to me. Whatever you want, you can do it, just please," Lisa begged. 

"She wants to be noble now, huh?" Seun said, speaking for the first time as he looked at the taller one. 

"She does indeed," he nodded. 

"I'm afraid it's just not that simple," he clicked his tongue. "No you see, you don't get to remove yourself from something and disappear. You don't get to act like you were never apart of something bigger than yourself and move on with your life. It's not fair for us, it's really not."

He walked over to Chaeyoung and Lisa’s eyes widened as he grabbed her by a chunk of her hair, yanking on it as she screamed underneath the duct tape. 

"You let her go! I said you take me! Take me, but you let her go!"

"Let her go-!"

Another punch was delivered to the side of Lisa's face and she gasped when she felt something crack in her jaw. It was probably broken at this point and she clenched her eyes shut as the pain traveled through the side of her mouth until she could feel it in her whole face. She tried to blink her eyes open, but it was hard to focus on anything with white spots dancing around her vision. She spits out some more blood and Chaeyoung stared back at her with tear-filled eyes as the man kept a tight grip on her hair.

"As I've reiterated before, I so wish it was that easy but it isn't," he shrugged. "Do you see what happens when you're naive and selfish? Huh, do you?" he said. "If only you would have let your girlfriend know about this beforehand, don't you think she would have been less forthcoming about getting involved with you? That you wouldn't be in this mess now?"

Chaeyoung sniffles and shakes her head as much as she can and Lisa tries to take a deep breath through her nose but it hurts too much. 

"I was an assassin," Lisa starts and she has to cough out some more blood in order to speak clearly. 

"When I-when I- met you in New Zealand, I was trying to leave but I had to get out of the country which is why I suggested we should leave. I'm sorry," Lisa breathes. "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry I put you through this. I swear to God I never meant to put you through this." 

She tries to stop herself from crying but she can't. Her hands shake behind her and the tears that stream down her face mix in with the blood on her lips, creating a puddle of blood in her lap. 

Lisa shakes her head and looks back up at Chaeyoung to see her staring at her with an unrecognizable look on her face. "I'm sorry," she breathes. 

"Should we call off the wedding then, Seungjae?"

The taller one, Seungjae, laughs and reaches down to grip the tape on Chaeyoung's mouth. 

"What do you think?" he asks before ripping it off of her. 

Chaeyoung winces and Lisa notices that her bottom lip is swollen, most likely from being hit, and she shakes her head quickly as she tries unsuccessfully to pull herself free. 

"It's okay!" she gasps. 

"It's okay, it's okay! I love you, I don't care about that, I don't. Whatever you did back then, I love you, we still love you Lisa-" she chokes out and before Lisa could catch it, Seun’s eyebrows shot up.

"Did you hear that?” he chuckled. _“We?"_

Chaeyoung starts crying even harder and Lisa shakes in her chair as Seungjae's eyes light up and he snaps his fingers. 

"Oh! We forgot to congratulate you two!"

Seungjae pushes Chaeyoung's head away roughly before walking around and reaching into his pocket and pulling out the same ultrasound picture that was next to the bedside lamp. The blood drains from Lisa's face and she feels her heart plummet into her stomach as she stares at the picture in his hands. The one thing that she had treasured the most in such a short amount of time was now known to everyone in the room. Tears streamed down her face as she struggled to pull herself out of the restraints, the chair moving as she thrashed around and yelled at the man to put that fucking picture down!

"Jinwoo told you what would happen," Seungjae shook his head and finally looked away from the photo to toss it at Lisa's feet where it landed face down. 

"He told you that you joined a federation and that once you were in, you couldn't leave," he said pointing a finger at her. 

"He told you that what we did, what we were, that was for life," and he shakes his head in disbelief. "He told you! Why didn't you listen to him?!"

Seungjae rubbed his forehead, as if he was in distress, before taking a deep breath and rubbing his hands together. "I thought you were smarter than that. I thought you would know better than to leave like that. You don't run away and think we won't find you. You should know that!" he shouted.

Seun pulled out a gun and Chaeyoung's eyes widened before she started thrashing in the chair and Lisa followed her line of sight and shouted at both of them to stop. It was a pistol with a silencer attached to the muzzle, probably what they had used when they shot Lily and Lisa struggled against the chair, almost tipping herself over again but Seun was faster and grabbed a hold of the back of it before tossing the gun to Seungjae. 

He caught it easily with both hands and turned it around before pointing it straight at Lisa. 

"Stop! Stop!" Chaeyoung screamed. "Please!" she cried. "Please!"

Lisa's bottom lip trembled and she closed her eyes briefly, trying to think of everything she could have done differently, thinking of why she had gotten involved with Chaeyoung, thinking of how she could have disregarded her safety so carelessly. 

As she screamed, Lisa tried to block the sound out and think of everything she wanted to remember. She wanted to remember the way Chaeyoung smiled, the way she slept when she was overworked, the way she stared at her stomach when she thought Lisa wasn't looking but most of all she wanted to remember her eyes. Those eyes that held every single emotion one person was able to feel. 

_"Hey look at this," Chaeyoung said, joining Lisa on the couch as she watched a Japanese film on Netflix._

_Lisa grabbed the remote control to pause it and turned to face her girlfriend as she flipped through a book, scanning one side of the page with her index finger before moving onto the next._

_"What is that?"_

_"A baby book for names," she hummed._

_"What?" Lisa's eyes widened. "We literally just found out yesterday! How did you get that already?"_

_Chaeyoung stopped looking through the book to frown at Lisa and scooted away to put some distance between them that had Lisa rolling her eyes and grabbing her arm to tug her back into her side. Chaeyoung struggled half-heartedly, whining that she didn't want to sit next to someone that was being so mean to her and that wasn't interested in naming their own kid._

_"It's not that I'm not interested," Lisa sighed. "I'm just surprised. Where did you even get that?"_

__The younger girl pouts as she flips the book around and looks up at Lisa. "Daiso, it was on sale for 69 cents when I went to get some new shower sandals and I saw it so I picked it up."_ _

__

_Lisa leans down to rub her face against her cheek, pecking her neck twice as she squirms and it immediately brings a smile to her face. She smells like coconut body wash and aloe vera, a simple combination but one that makes Lisa feel content because it reminds her of home. She kisses her again and Chaeyoung tries but fails to pull her away from her neck until she starts laughing when Lisa kisses up further toward her jaw and behind her ear._

__

_"You want to pick out names already?"_

__

_Chaeyoung hums and opens the book back up, not really looking for a particular page as Lisa settles her chin on her shoulder and watches._

__

_"We probably won't know the gender for a couple more months so we can look at whatever sounds nice for now."_

__

_Lisa hadn't really been thinking of that at the moment. She had only just got over the fact that Chaeyoung was pregnant and would not only be carrying, but also giving birth to a boy or girl in roughly eight months from now. After the past failed attempts to get pregnant and the likelihood of a miscarriage, Lisa had tried to take a more cautious approach to this pregnancy out of fear of getting hurt, but Chaeyoung had been so excited already. She stayed up on her phone for long hours of the day, reading articles on first-time mothers, watching baby videos on YouTube and talking to her mom until the glow from the screen of her phone hurt her eyes too much. It was hard to try to stay neutral when Chaeyoung was diving headfirst into this pregnancy so Lisa had put her reservations aside and involved herself as much as possible._

__

_"Do you want a boy or a girl?"_

__

_While lifting the book up slightly, Chaeyoung chewed on her bottom lip and thought to herself before turning her head to look at Lisa._

__

_"A girl? I mean...we can dress her in so many cute outfits and put those really big bow headbands on her. I would really like that," Chaeyoung smiled and turned back to her book._

__

_"What about you?"_

__

_Honestly, Lisa didn't have a preference, as long as the kid looked like Chaeyoung and was healthy she would be happy but she knew that her girlfriend wanted a more sound answer so she said a girl as well._

__

_They looked through names, noting some that they liked and others that seemed too old-fashioned or didn't really fit right with either of them. They found one, Hwan that they both agreed was pretty and nice for either a boy or a girl and Lisa played around with it in her head as Chaeyoung dog-eared the page. As they were skimming through one of the pages, Lisa rubbed the skin on Chaeyoung's hip and moved her hair behind her ear so she could kiss her. "I was thinking..." she murmured and kissed another part of her ear, "whose name would the kid take?"_

__

_Chaeyoung stopped what she was doing and looked up at the TV her expression reflecting off the screen as Lisa watched her face until she leaned back into the couch. "I don't really know. I mean-I" she paused and chewed on her lip before turning sideways so she could face her girlfriend._

__

_"I'm carrying the baby, so this baby is already a part of me, you know? I'll get to experience what it feels like for it to grow inside of me and kick me, but you won't. I want you to be as much as a part of this as I am...so" she glanced down, worrying her lip between her teeth before looking back up at her. "Maybe the baby can have your family name?"_

__

_When Lisa's eyes widened, Chaeyoung tried to backtrack immediately and started shaking her head. "But not if you don't want to! It's totally up to you and I know-I know that this was all pretty sudden but I swear-!"_

__

_Lisa cut her off to press her lips against her own, kissing her as hard as possible hoping to convey all the emotions that were going through her head at that moment. Excitement, nervousness, happiness, fear, but most importantly, love. She loved this girl so damn much and she was already in love with this little human that wasn't even more than a raspberry at this point. Chaeyoung kissed her back after a moment, her hand coming up to touch her neck as she tilted her head to the side and ran her tongue along the skin of her bottom lip until she opened her mouth and let her inside. Her tongue traced her teeth, reaching backward as she groaned and pulled Chaeyoung forward, the book falling out of her lap and tumbling to the floor so the girl could straddle her lap._

__

_When they needed to breathe, she trailed her lips along her neck and over her cheeks before kissing both of her eyelids and redirecting her mouth back towards Chaeyoung. She moaned against her mouth, tracing her hands over her shoulders and down her chest, over her breast before stopping at the waistband of her sweatpants. Lisa bit her lip slightly, tugging on it as she groaned and shifted her hips slightly as their pelvic bone came in contact with each other and Lisa's hands ran past her thighs to cup around her ass and squeeze it lightly._

__

_"Wait," Chaeyoung said, pulling back and laughing when Lisa whined and tried to tug her forward again. "You didn't tell me what you thought about that._

__

_"I thought that I made that pretty clear by all of this" Lisa said, gesturing with her hand between the two of them before placing it back on Chaeyoung's ass. "Now come back here, please."_

__

_Chaeyoung held her back with a hand on her chest and the older girl frowned hard as she laughed some more. "So you're okay with that?"_

__

_"Woman. Do I have to spell it out for you? I am over the moon about that. Yes, the baby can have my name. Now let's keep kiss-"_

__

_Chaeyoung leaned forward and Lisa puckered her lips, thinking that she was going to kiss her again before feeling her lips at her ear instead._

__

_"I want it too," she whispered. "When we marry, I want it too. Chaeyoung Manoban," she chuckled, her breath tickling the hair on Lisa's skin._

__

_Said girl almost choked, her eyes widening as Chaeyoung moved back and looked at her with bright eyes and a small satisfied smile on her face. Lisa had to take a deep breath, making sure that she heard that right before she shook her head._

__

_"Most people don't even take their spouse's name when they get married. Are you sure?" she coughed._

__

_Chaeyoung nodded and pecked the tip of her nose before licking her lips. "I'm sure. I want us to be a family, as much as possible. Having the same name means a lot to me and it makes it feel more real. I want this, all of this with you, so I want to do it right."_

__

__

__

The moment was still fresh in her mind even though it was only two days ago. But she needed to remember that. It was a good memory. It was something that she would be okay dying with. She opened her own eyes and sought out her girlfriend, making eye contact with her as Chaeyoung cried and struggled to keep her breathing control. She had to stop crying, it was going to be okay. If they killed her, at least it would be alright. They could forget about her and Chaeyoung could go on with her life. 

__

"Stop crying, Chaeyoung," Lisa said and shook her head as the older girl sobbed and dropped her head to her chest. "Baby please, please stop crying. Think of the baby, it needs you. It'll be okay."

__

Chaeyoung shook her head, crying even harder as she looked up and licked her lips. "Li-Lisa, please. I love you, please."

__

"I know," she said and sniffled before Seun grabbed the back of her head roughly, causing her to yelp and clench her teeth. 

__

"I love you, okay? I love you-both of you, baby."

__

Chaeyoung sobbed and Seungjae sucked his teeth in disapproval before stepping behind Chaeyoung and stroking the side of her head even though she tried to shy away from his touch. 

__

"Kill me," Lisa said, taking a deep breath as she felt her jaw pulsate in pain. 

__

"Shoot me, just do it and leave her out of this. Shoot me and get out, just get it over with."

__

Seungjae chuckled and shook his head as he looked straight at Lisa. 

__

“You still don't get it, do you? Even after all your training and all your assignments. Life in the real world must have really made you stupid" he said. "I wish-" he took a deep breath and his shoulders slumped as he exhaled. "That I could, I really wish I could. Director gave me different orders, you see, he was _so_ upset that he told me something different. He told me to hurt you so bad that you wouldn't be able to live with yourself, that you wouldn't know what living was like afterward."

__

Before Lisa could process what he was saying, Seungjae turned the gun on Chaeyoung, placing the barrel of the silencer right at the back of her head and Lisa screamed as Chaeyoung's eyes widened in alarm. 

__

She tried so hard to pull herself away from the gun and reach out to Lisa, as if that would help her, but Seun was gripping the back of her head so tightly that she couldn't struggle free either. Blood continued to trickle down her neck as she yelled for them to let Chaeyoung go, that she wasn't worth it. 

__

"YOU SHOOT ME! I TOLD YOU TO SHOOT ME! DO YOU HEAR ME?! SHOOT ME!"

__

Seungjae clicked his tongue and shook his head sadly. 

__

"PLEASE, SHE'S PREGNANT! SHE'S PREGNANT, PLEASE! SHE HAS A BABY INSIDE OF HER!"

__

Seungjae eyed Lisa and before she could say anything else, she heard the gun go off, the bullet penetrating the back of her head before Chaeyoung went limp and her body slumped down into the chair. Blood sprayed across Lisa's face as she stared in utter horror at her girlfriend's lifeless body, blinking the moist liquid out of her eyes and tasting the faint copper on her lips as her whole body shook. 

__

"C-Chaeyoung.”

__

She wasn’t moving. Lisa felt blood trickle into her eyes but she ignored it as she tried to make out whether or not she could still see her chest moving up and down. 

__

“Chaeyoung?" she breathed. 

__

"Baby?”

__

“Baby, hey wake up. Baby wake up, please. WAKE UP!" she screamed. 

__

"CHAEYOUNG!"

__


	2. innocence

_“You’re not from around here, are you?”_

_Lisa looked up, her fingers nervously shuffling the crumpled up bills on the counter as the shorter girl stepped up beside her._

_The shop was empty with an electric fan spinning slowly on the counter as the old woman working at the register simply flipped through her magazine and sighed as Lisa shook her head._

_The girl chuckled, pushing some of her blonde hair behind her ear and softly nudging Lisa’s hands aside._

_“Here, let me help you,” she murmured._

_She separated what looked like two twenty dollar bills with the Queen’s face printed across the front, and pushed the rest into a pile back to where Lisa had nervously thrown her wallet on the counter._

_“I’m Chaeyoung, by the way,” she added quickly._

_And when she pushed the change over to the old woman, her smile bright and soft, Lisa clenched her jaw and curled her fingers into a fist at her side._

Lisa jolted awake. 

The back of her head was throbbing as she blinked up at the ceiling. When she tried to turn her head, pain coursed through the side of her face until she had to grit her teeth to keep from screaming. 

Her legs and hands were still bound to the chair but she must have fallen over at some point because the wet moisture of the carpet was pressing into the side of her face. She blinked again, trying to listen to any sounds in the room or pick up on footsteps and the fluctuation of two different voices, but she heard nothing. 

They were gone. 

Lisa swallowed her saliva and struggled against the ropes that were holding her hands together. After having already somewhat loosened them earlier, she thrashed against the floor, biting her tongue as she rubbed her wrists together until she could feel the material cutting even deeper into her skin. 

“Fuck!” she shouted. 

Lisa turned her face into the material of the carpet, taking in a lungful of air as she felt blood trickle down the back of her neck. 

“Okay,” she sighed. “Okay...I have to- I have to pull myself-out of these-out of these ties.”

Lisa flexed her fingers, the slight movement causing her to wince as she shifted on the chair. 

“One….” she said, taking another deep breath. 

“Two….”

“Three-!”

Lisa yanked her wrist from the rope, feeling the material cut across her skin as she screamed. The pain was instant, traveling up from her hand and through her right arm until she was shaking, the pain creating a tingling sensation in her fingers. 

Once she could feel her hand, Lisa loosened the rest of the tie so she could pull her other hand free. Then, she bent down to undo the wire around her legs, her fingers and her legs shaking as she fell out of the chair and crawled over on her hands and knees. 

It was too dark for Lisa to see anything, but she could see the outline of a figure on the other side of the room in the same upright position that she had remembered before being knocked out. 

Lisa crawled over to the chair, unaware that she was holding her breath as she pushed herself up to her feet and stood over her. 

Chaeyoung's head was still angled down to her chest and with her hair covering her face, Lisa found it even harder to make out her features. Her teeth were biting into her lip so hard that she didn’t realize that she was bleeding until she could taste it in her mouth. 

“P-P-Please,” she breathed. 

“Pl-Please, wake up.”

Lisa’s knees wobbled until she fell down again, her shins smacking against the carpet as she hesitantly reached out to push Chaeyoung’s hair away from her face. When she pulled her hand away, she could feel the blood wet against her fingers and stinging her skin where the ropes had rubbed her wrists raw. 

“No," she shook her head. "No, you're okay. It's okay. I'm gonna- I'm gonna get you out of this. You’re okay,” Lisa whispered. 

Her fingers shook as she kept pushing her bangs back and tucking strands of her hand behind her ear. 

You’re okay,” she nodded. “It’s gonna be okay.”

“We have- I just- I have to- I have to get you out of this.”

She surveyed the ropes, but they weren’t that much different than the style that her own had been done. The ropes around her torso kept her bound to the chair. Her arms were tied behind her back, but her feet were wrapped together in duck tape which was odd. 

Lisa undid the tape first, bending down to rip the tape off with her mouth and then moving up to undo the rope around her chest. After that, she shuffled around the back of the chair to pull her hands free and almost immediately, she slumped forward, Chaeyoung's body succumbing to gravity until she almost slid off of the chair. 

Lisa caught her before she could fall, gathering Chaeyoung in her arms and moving so she could sit back against the opposite wall. Her skin felt cold to the touch; where Lisa’s hands could feel, over her wrists, along her hands, and the side of her neck, it felt like ice. 

“Chae...Chaeyoung?” she murmured. “You have to wake up, baby.”

Lisa pushed her hair away from her face, her fingers shaking as she saw the bullet hole just above her brow. She felt tears well in her eyes, but she ignored that in favor of squeezing Chaeyoung’s hand and rubbing her thumb just above her pulse point. 

“Please-” she choked out. “Please, wake up.”

“You have to wake up!”

Lisa shook her, as if that action alone could wake her up, as if it could erase everything that happened in the last couple of hours. When Chaeyoung’s arm fell limp to her side, Lisa hurriedly grabbed it and pulled her girlfriend to her chest, holding her whole body as if she could pick her up and fit the older girl inside of herself. 

“Please,” she cried. 

“Please- please don’t-” she shook her head. “Don’t leave me, please!”

She couldn’t stop crying. As she pushed her nose into her neck and rocked back and forth, it felt like she couldn’t breathe. Like there wasn’t enough oxygen in her lungs to keep up with the force of her sobs. 

“Wake up!” she wailed. 

“Wake up, Chaeyoung!”

Lisa knew that it was useless, that she was dead. She had heard the gun go off and she had sat there and watched her blood spray across the room when she died. But between watching the love of her life being gunned down right in front of her and regaining consciousness to her cold, lifeless body something had twisted itself inside of her. 

Something that was unable to grasp that Chaeyoung was dead- that she was really not here anymore. But the harder that she cried and the longer she sat underneath the window with her body in her arms, the more that feeling twisted itself around her head and strangled her. 

When Lisa pulled her face away, she wiped the snot from under her nose and blinked a few more times to clear her vision before smoothing Chaeyoung’s hair back. Her fingers wouldn’t stop shaking and the longer she stared at her girlfriend, the more nauseous she could feel herself becoming. 

It should have been her laying here, not Chaeyoung. 

“I’m sorry,” she breathed and roughly pushed the tears away that had begun to run down her cheeks. 

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Before she can get another word out, she breaks down, squeezing her eyes shut as she tightens her grip on Chaeyoung. Her chest heaves with the force of her sobs and as her teeth rattle, Lisa simply presses her forehead against Chaeyoung’s own, feeling flesh to flesh and blood to blood. 

“I’m gonna find them,” she whispered. 

When she moved to press a kiss to her forehead, her lips seared themselves into her skin, as if Lisa was hoping to take the memory of it with her. She held the side of her face and squeezed her eyes shut again when she pulled back. 

“I’m gonna find them, okay?”

She ran her finger tips down the slope of her nose as she felt her heartbeat ringing in her ears. 

“And I’m going to kill them,” she breathed. “I’ll kill them for hurting you. I’ll kill them for taking you away from me. I promise you-” 

Lisa’s jaw clenched as she pushed her face into Chaeyoung’s chest, screaming out her pain and curling her fingers into the material of her clothes like that would be enough to bring her back to life. 

“I’ll kill them-” and when she took a deep breath it felt like her world was finally splitting apart, like it knew that things would never be the same. 

“I’ll make them pay for killing us.”

She pressed another kiss to the top of her nose before wiping her eyes and moving. She stood up, supporting Chaeyoung’s weight as she grabbed her underneath her knees and got to her feet. 

She felt weak- physically, mentally, emotionally- just about as weak as anyone could feel. But she managed to walk across the room, pushing the door open with her shoulder and watching as the light from the windows flooded into the hallway.

The apartment was trashed.

The picture frames on the wall were thrown on the ground with glass scattered across the carpet. The furniture was turned upside down with some of the shelves broke up on the floor and many of the art pieces and little knick-knacks in their apartment were either smashed or thrown about. It looked as if both of the men either wanted to create the appearance of a robbery or they were looking for something. 

Lisa pushed her way through their bedroom, stepping over clothes strewn along the floor and the sheets that were torn and ripped from the bed. There were things everywhere; boxes opened and drawers pulled out and flung across the room. As she laid Chaeyoung down on the bed, Lisa surveyed the damage in their room and quickly made work of grabbing down a backpack from inside the closet and stuffing it full of everything that she would need. 

She turned over one of the lamps that were on the floor and popped open the bottom of the compartment that held her passport and a fake identification card from Rhode Island, some state that was located in the U.S. 

Afterwards, she crossed the room and took down the mirror that hung from the wall and clenched her teeth as she punched the glass with her fist. As much as she tried to avoid it, she couldn’t stop the whimper of pain that slipped past her lips or the sting of glass that had cut the skin of her knuckles. 

She took some of the shards of glass out, tossing it to the floor as she pulled out a manilla folder of documents and tossed it on the bed. 

When she dropped the mirror, the glass clattered on the carpet and she snatched a few framed photos off of the mantel to shove it alongside the other documents in her backpack. She grabbed her cap off the handle of the door, situating it on her hair and ran into the bathroom to dig her glasses out of the drawer. 

Just before she could put them on, she caught a glimpse of herself in the bathroom mirror. The side of her face was swollen where she had been punched; the skin blossoming red under her eye and down the side of her face where it met her jaw. Her bottom lip was split and just underneath the cap she could see pieces of her sticking out from where she had been yanked too hard. 

She couldn’t stand the sight of herself. She didn’t even deserve to be alive right now. 

Quickly, Lisa switched the light off and put her glasses on before walking back out to the bedroom and taking a seat next to Chaeyoung’s body. 

She was so still that it almost made it seem like she was sleeping. The only problem was her chest wasn’t moving and that her face was covered in blood from a sizeable hole in her head. Lisa pushed the heel of her hand against her eyes and shook her head, she had to leave, preferably now. But the longer she sat next to Chaeyoung, the harder it became to accept what she was looking at and what this would all mean. 

Not only would she never see Chaeyoung again, but she would never be able to come back here again. 

She opened her eyes and leaned over her body to cradle Chaeyoung’s face in her hands. She was so cold that Lisa felt sick and her fingers began to shake as she forced herself not to cry. 

It was all useless, though. 

“I’m so sorry for all - all of this,” she cried. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

She kissed her nose and laid her back down gently, smoothing her hair to the side and pressing her palm against her stomach. 

As she wiped her face, she reached for the phone on the nightstand and quickly dialed in the emergency phone line. 

“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”

“Come quick.” Lisa sniffles and roughly wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “There’s been-there’s been a murder.”

“Ma’am, where are-”

Lisa ends the call and throws her backpack over her shoulder, standing up quickly as she crosses the room and switches the light off.

_“I love you!” Lisa shouts._

_Chaeyoung shuffles forward in her sandals, her tote bag hanging over her shoulder as she stumbles and almost trips on the tiles._

_Lisa snorts as she watches her go from the couch and Chaeyoung gives her the middle finger, slamming the door open as she yells, “bitch!”_

“I love you,” Lisa whispers over her shoulder.

* * *

By the time Lisa makes it to the car garage, she can hear the police and the ambulance sirens in the distance. She runs the rest of the way down the platform and then dashes for her car parked on the other side of the garage. 

Lisa smears blood across the door handle as she unlocks her car and throws her bag in the backseat. As she starts the engine, her Mercedes roars to life and she pulls out of the garage, turning her blinker on and taking a sharp turn in the opposite direction of the sirens. 

The buildings are a blur as Lisa drives past, her foot on the gas pedal as she swerves in and out of traffic and follows the familiar route to the building that she knows like the back of her hand. 

As she comes to a stop at a red light, Lisa reaches underneath her seat and pulls her phone out of the mesh compartment. She unlocks the screen and taps through a few contacts before she pulls up her name and hits the dial tone. 

It rings exactly three times, just as Lisa is pushing down on the gas pedal, when she hears the line connect and some slight shuffling in the background. 

“Hello?” someone mumbled tiredly.

Lisa merges onto the intersection and quickly sets the phone down on the passenger seat as she swallows. 

“I- It’s me, Lisa. Are you still at the same place?”

The line is silent for a long second, long enough for Lisa to double check that she phoned the right person before she focuses back on the road. 

She can hear someone move around on the other line before they speak again. 

“Lisa?”

“Yes,” she nods her head, even though she knows the other girl can’t see her. “It’s me, it’s Lisa. I just- please, just tell me. Are you still at the same place?”

“Um, yeah, I mean, yes, I am. Why? What’s going on?”

“I’ll explain later. I’m on my way over to you right now.”

“Now?!” she hears something thud loudly over the line before someone swears under their breath. 

“What- why now? What the hell is going-”

“Space station!” Lisa said quickly. 

The phrase was enough to get the other person to stop talking; it was enough for the line to go quiet as she tightened her hands on the steering wheel. 

“Space station, please,” she murmured. 

The speedometer picked up as Lisa flew past a line of cars and switched over to the lane beside her. When she glanced at her phone, she could still see the call running and she licked her lips as the other girl sighed softly. 

“Okay...just- you know how to get in. I’ll be here.”

Lisa blinked the tears out of her eyes and jerked her head in a nod as she reached for her cellphone. 

“Thank you,” she whispered. 

“No problem, Lisa,” she sighed. “Just- just talk to me, alright?”

“I will,” and when the line went dead, Lisa glanced at the rearview mirror and thought that she might have seen Chaeyoung in the backseat.

* * *

The warehouse is the same as Lisa remembers it nearly five years ago. The fire escape is still missing the last step and the large trash bin is still collecting pieces of furniture, discarded art work, and a litter of cats that pick at fast food bags and chew on unopened coke bottles. 

Lisa parks her car around the back of the building and puts her backpack on before walking along the side of the warehouse and leaping up to grab a hold of the bottom of the ladder. She pulls herself up, grabbing ahold of the bar above her head until she can climb up the rest of the way. 

The fifth level of the building is sectioned off for renovations, but Lisa simply slips underneath the tarp and pulls down some of the tape that covers the window to reach for the key underneath the windowsill. The lock shifts into place and Lisa slides the window up, throwing her leg over the other side before she ducks through the window. 

The only sound that Lisa can hear is her foot as she steps down on the floor and feels the hardwood creak underneath her. The further she walks into the room, the more the apartment comes into view. There’s a rack full of novels piled on top of each other in stacks and framed pictures of landmarks placed along the wall. The couch is covered with newspapers, some that have fallen to the floor, and others that have been cut out and are scattered across the coffee table. 

Lisa walks past the living room and down the hallway, her hand trailing along the wallpaper until she pushes open one of the doors and peeks her head inside. The room is empty with a small cot pushed to the side of the wall and a computer setup against the far wall with papers scattered across the desk. 

When Lisa steps back, she turns around and comes face to face with the barrel of a 45 Caliber semi-automatic handgun. Her breath catches in her throat and automatically, her hands come up, palms spread wide as the person sighs loudly and rolls her eyes. 

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Move the gun, first,” Lisa gestures with her head. “Then I’ll talk.”

The girl stares at her for another second longer before pulling the gun away and tucking it into the back of her pants. She gives Lisa a once over before shaking her head and gesturing to the couch. 

“Come and sit...you look like you need it.”

When she turns on her heels, Lisa closes her eyes and lets out a breath that she didn’t even know that she was holding. 

“Are you coming?” she shouts.

Lisa looks down at her wrists, studying the bruises left behind from the ropes and flexes her fingers as she begins walking back down the hallway. 

“I’m coming, Jisoo.”

* * *

Lisa flinches as Jisoo dabs the corner of her lip with a cotton ball soaked in antiseptic, leveling her with a glare as the older girl rolls her eyes and pulls her back by her elbow. 

“Stop moving, we would have been done already if you’d have just kept still.”

Jisoo dabs at the spot again and Lisa holds herself back from flinching, this time balling both of her hands into a fist on the top of her thighs as Jisoo moves back to the first aid kit and pulls out a tube of ointment. 

She squirts some on her finger before rubbing it over the area and caping the tube close. 

“Are you going to talk to me now?”

Lisa looks down at her lap and her wrists that Jisoo had managed to bandage up not even ten minutes ago. Her knuckles are still red from where she punched out the mirror in her bedroom and every time she talks, her jaw bristles in pain. When she rubs her eyes, Jisoo’s weight shifts on the couch as she moves to gather all of the stuff from the first aid kit and put it up. 

In the kitchen, she can hear her move about; what with the closing of cabinets and the clink of dish ware as she prepares two cups of tea. Lisa can smell the jasmine tea from the couch and as she shifts in place, her stomach twists itself back into knots when Jisoo walks out from the kitchen with a tray of tea and some napkins. 

She sets it down on the table and takes a seat again, staring at the porcelain Russian design along the rim of the glass until she clears her throat. 

“Why did you come here?”

For a long time, Lisa doesn’t say anything. As she sits there, she tries to think of someway to coherently explain what the past seventeen hours have been like, but when she attempts to open her mouth, she finds that she has no way to recount what happened. Every time she closes her eyes, she sees the look on Chaeyoung’s face just before she was shot dead, she sees the way Chaeyoung had struggled when he had showed them the ultrasound picture, and she remembers almost vividly the way her blood had sprayed warm across her face. 

In a sense, she feels numb; as if the entire ordeal had broken something in the back of her head. And in a way, _it had_. At least, Lisa feels like it did because she can’t stop shaking and whenever she tries to replay the events of the day in her head- she can’t get past Chaeyoung being tied up in that chair and how utterly helpless she felt watching her struggle like that. 

When Jisoo reaches over and lays her hand over her own, her fingers squeezing her in a comforting gesture, Lisa licks her lips and softly whispers, “Jinwoo found me.”

Jisoo doesn’t say anything but Lisa watches her face and she can see her expressions flit between shock, confusion, and anger before ultimately settling on disbelief. 

She anticipates her question before she can even ask it, which is why Jisoo’s eyebrows furrow as Lisa shakes her head. 

“I don’t know how, but he did,” she sighs. “I was...I was at the store and when I-” she pauses and Jisoo squeezes her hand again but that can only comfort her so much. 

“I came back home and the door was unlocked.”

Lisa remembers the panic and unease that had curled itself into the pit of her stomach when the door slid open without any movement whatsoever. She remembers how her initial thought was to question herself before she had ultimately walked in and discovered Lily in the kitchen in a pool of her own blood. 

“They killed our cat,” Lisa said and her voice wavered as Jisoo rubbed her arm in a silent way to encourage her to continue. 

“I couldn’t find Chaeyoung anywhere, so I ran through the apartment looking for her.”

Throughout the memories filtering through her head, Lisa can recount the frenzied way she had moved through their place, her long limbs unable to keep up with the speed of her thoughts as she barreled through each room to find her. When she remembers seeing Chaeyoung bound to that chair, it’s accompanied by the searing pain from that blunt object knocking her down to the floor. 

Every time she replays that moment, she wishes that she would have noticed someone behind her sooner; it might have changed things, it might have saved Chaeyoung’s life. 

“She was tied to a chair...with duct tape on her mouth,” Lisa said gesturing around her body. “I-when I came to, I was bound to a different chair across from her and I remember how she looked.”

 _Like she had fought,_ she wants to say.

Because she did. Chaeyoung would have been no match for two against one, but Lisa doesn’t doubt that she would have put up a fight as best as she could. She saw the way her clothes had been torn, how badly they had hit her, and the blood that was on her clothing. Lisa doesn’t want to imagine what that must have looked like or the terror that must have went through Chaeyoung’s mind when they broke in, but it wasn’t hard to craft a picture. 

She would have fought them, would have probably kicked them or tried to punch one of the men, but however hard she had fought, Lisa knew that Chaeyoung had reasoned with herself that it wouldn’t have been enough. 

If anything, that’s what hurt her the most; that Chaeyoung had knew how this was going to end, but was adamant on fighting as much as she could. 

“I had to tell her what happened,” Lisa said, swallowing noisily. 

“I told her about New Zealand and how I was trying to runaway. I told her about what I did and it was- it was horrible because everything I had told her up until this point had been a lie.”

Lisa struggles to calm herself down, but she can feel her pulse picking up and as she starts to rub her hands together, it’s almost as if everything is starting to hit her all at once. 

“And she didn’t even- she didn’t even care that all of that was a lie.”

“She didn’t even care!”

Lisa pushes the heel of her hand into her eyes, trying so hard to keep herself from crying but she remembers how Chaeyoung had looked at her. She remembers the way her face looked and how easily she had accepted everything because that’s just the type of girl that she was. 

She took everything; no matter what it was or what the consequences were, Chaeyoung would always take it, would always accept things for what they were. 

When Lisa pulled her hands away from her face, Jisoo reached for one of the napkins and carefully dabbed at her cheeks, collecting her tears and silently asking her whether or not she wanted to keep talking. 

That was the thing about talking; it was painful but it was also real. Words made everything seem more real once you knew what their outcome was. 

“I thought that they were going to kill me,” Lisa whispered. “I was prepared for it because that is what’s supposed to happen.”

Jisoo looked away, staring off at something above her TV, but Lisa knew that look. She knew that Jisoo understood because in their world that’s how things worked. In the federation, once you were in, you were in for a lifetime. And when you disobeyed, when you expressed any desire to go against what had been instilled inside you since day one, you were terminated. A contract would be put out on you and that would be the end of it. Lisa knew and Jisoo knew; both girls had witnessed and aided in enough jobs to know that was always the outcome. 

“But they didn’t,” Jisoo murmured. 

“No,” Lisa shook her head. “They didn’t. I-I sat there...I just sat there and watched them shoot her right in-right in the back of her head.”

Lisa choked out a sob, her head falling into her hands as Jisoo threw her arms around her and pulled the younger girl into her chest. Lisa’s whole body shook as she cried on Jisoo’s front, her tears soiling her shirt as she rocked her back and forth as if the motion was enough to comfort her. 

“I watched them kill her!” she wailed. 

She dug her fingernails into the material of Jisoo’s shirt and held onto her because she didn’t know what else to do. The scene kept replaying itself like a piece of film over and over and over again. Every time she let her mind wander, every time she had to recount this, it was always watching Chaeyoung slump forward in that chair and feeling her warm blood coat her face. 

Jisoo didn’t say anything and that was probably for the best. The only thing she did was rub Lisa’s arms and thumb her tears away until she was wiping the snot underneath her nose with the sleeve of her shirt. 

What could you say to someone that had just lost everything in their entire life within the span of a couple of hours?

Nothing and Jisoo understood that. 

When Lisa pulled away, she toed off her right Converse, watching the shoe thud to the floor before she reached down and dug out the laminated picture that she had kept there. Her thumb rubbed over the grainy image, over the little blob inside the photo that would never have a chance- that would never have the life - any life - that they could have given to them. 

Lisa pushed it into Jisoo’s hand and squeezed her eyes shut as the pain in the back of her head began to pulsate with renewed vigor. 

“Oh my god….” she heard her breathe. “Lisa...was she?”

She glanced at Jisoo, who sat shell-shocked beside her, and watched as the older girl stared at the ultrasound photo, her finger running over the print at the bottom. 

“But this was-” she started. “This was four- four days ago?” she pointed to the date at the bottom. 

“You found this out four days ago?”

Lisa nodded and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand as Jisoo sighed loudly. 

“Fuck...I’m- I’m so sorry, Lisa. I’m so fucking sorry.”

Lisa pushed her face into Jisoo’s shoulder, the older girl immediately grabbing a hold of her hand and squeezing it as she felt the younger girl shake. 

“I have to...you have to help me find them,” she breathed. 

“Everyone. All the cells, every hideout, every contact...I need them-” she pulled back then, staring intently at Jisoo’s face as the older girl swallowed. 

“I need it. _Please,_ ” she begged. “ _Please_ , help me find them!”

Jisoo was quiet for a long moment, staring down at the photo in her hands before passing it back to Lisa and running a hand down her face. If she could have aged ten years from that action alone, then it was through her eyes; her eyes were so expressive that Lisa knew the exact moment when she hesitated to say anything.

“I’m not _asking_ you to help me,” Lisa insisted. “I’m not even asking you to get involved. I’m only asking for information, the rest I can do on my own.”

And she meant every word of what she had said. Lisa wasn’t looking for someone to accompany her. She didn’t need someone watching her back or fighting alongside her. As much as Lisa didn’t want to admit it, she didn’t want Jisoo to insert herself into this for that exact reason. This wasn’t a job or some contract hit; this was an act of pure revenge. This was something that Lisa had to do on her own- for her sanity and for Chaeyoung’s- they both deserved that, at least. 

“I know you’re not asking me to help you,” Jisoo murmured and leaned forward to rest her elbows on her knees. 

She ran her fingers through her hair and pushed some of it behind her ear. 

“But it’s just not that easy anymore. Things have changed, Lisa,” she sighed. 

“I know that,” she whispered. 

Five years was a long time to disappear. Lisa had known that when she was running away. She had also been aware of what it would mean for her to try to vanish off the face of the earth. People would come looking for her; she would ultimately be replaced and things would inevitably have to change. But after today, Lisa can’t afford to think about that or reason logically within herself that because things aren’t the way that they used to be, that this all means nothing. 

Even though she knows Jisoo would deny it if she outright said it, this whole mess is of her own doing and is entirely her fault. Lisa is responsible for Chaeyoung’s murder. Lisa is responsible for their unborn kid’s death. No matter how much things have changed, Lisa has to do this. 

If she doesn’t, she won’t ever be able to live with herself. 

“But you don’t know that,” Jisoo whispers. “Come on,” she says, standing up slowly. 

“Let me show you something.”

* * *

“As far as I know, no one has seen Jinwoo in months,” Jisoo says as she clicks through a few documents on her computer. 

Lisa stands behind her, looking over her shoulder as she skims through travel documents, receipts, and emails with encrypted files that are locked with a passcode. 

Jisoo clicks through a few documents before the screen loads with an image of a tall, slender figure fitted in a black suit and his hair dyed in a shock of blonde with the edges shaved off. Lines have aged his face, but Lisa remembers Jinwoo as if it was 2004 all over again and she was some gangly, introverted fifteen-year old stumbling into a world that she knew nothing about with only naivety in her eyes. 

She stares at the figure on the screen for a long time, until it feels like she won’t vomit. Until it feels like she can breathe again. 

“This was taken in Romania...I think sometime in November. Jinwoo has been hard to track down because he keeps switching locations. I don’t even think his closest people know where he is half of the time,” she murmured. 

“Why do you think he keeps jumping between places?”

“I don’t know,” Jisoo shook her head. 

She clicked on a second file and it pulled up a spreadsheet with different names in English, Korean, Thai, and Russian. There were separate columns for names, locations, price amounts, and bank information that would be needed for wire transfers. 

“What is this?”

“I told you things have changed,” she sighed. “This is what Jinwoo has been working on for so long.”

Jisoo scrolled through the list but she didn’t even reach the end before clicking on a separate document that were all articles written about missing children; boys and girls ranging in different ages from 10- 17 and another encrypted file that had photos of some of those same children that had been reported missing. 

“He’s sex trafficking children,” Lisa muttered. 

Jisoo nodded. “I started tracking these reports less than a year ago and I’ve had some help, but this could go back for years and stretch in places that I’m not even aware of,” she sighed. 

“But- why? I mean, I _know why_ but-”

“It’s lucrative, for one. Some rings can bring in nearly nine billion in revenue and it’s easy with the right team and connections.”

She clicked on a separate file and enlarged the screen to display a map dotted with red checkpoints across parts of Asia, the United States, and Europe. 

“Jinwoo has been opening clubs- mostly nightclubs and massage parlors throughout these different regions to lure in potential victims and force them into sex trafficking. These places are only situated in low income areas and big cities. It makes it more easier and it increases the likelihood of potential clients. No one is going to look for their teenager if they go missing and no parent, as bad as it may sound, no parent is gonna pass up selling their kid for a quick hundred bucks if they're desperate.”

Lisa felt herself grow sick at the image of what all this meant.

When she had joined the federation, it was because she had nowhere else to go. She was an only child and when her parents died in a plane crash, she had nothing else to do, no one to turn to. Jinwoo was only fifteen years older than her, but he treated her like a daughter. He took her in, he gave her clothes, food, and a place to sleep when her home was boarded up and foreclosed. 

He also groomed her, though. He trained her just like all the other kids like her. They learned how to handle firearms, they trained in hand-to-hand combat, and in tactical skills that would be useful once they were sent out into the real world. 

Lisa never questioned anything. She never wavered, never said no to any order that was given because she knew that it had come from Jinwoo. And if it had come from Jinwoo, then Lisa knew that it had to be done, that she had an obligation to do anything he asked her. But then again, nearly everyone felt the need to do what Jinwoo had asked.

Teenagers, children, and adults, Jinwoo had saved them all, but in the back of her head Lisa knew that it was never that simple. 

The people that failed to do what they were told, the kids that lagged behind in training or were no match for their opponent in hand-to-hand combat, were always sent to the green van. 

When Lisa closes her eyes, she can almost visualize it. 

Fifteen and leaning against the metal gate that separated the compound from the long stretch of highway just at the bottom of the hill. With the sun out and the heat making her shirt stick to her back, Lisa remembers pulling at her shorts and using a hand to shield the sun from her eyes. Three girls, all in tattered uniforms, messy ponytails and blank faces, were herded to the green van. 

It’s what many assumed were their ticket back home- back to poverty and a place that didn’t want them anymore. The green van took you back to where you belonged. 

But had it? Or had this sex trafficking ring started even then? 

Lisa had watched from the fence and saw their faces pressed against the window until the van pulled away and she lost sight of them. 

Maybe this is what Jinwoo had always done, but Lisa was too naive to see it.

“Then why would they still come after me?” she asked. 

Jisoo looked over her shoulder at her and frowned before turning back to her laptop. 

“Honestly? I don’t know. Maybe to tie up loose strings? This trafficking thing is a big deal and from what I’ve been tracing, Jinwoo has poured all of his personnel, resources, and money into it. This is all one big organization,” she gestures to her screen. 

Lisa swallows audibly and steps back from the computer, running her hands through her hair as she takes a deep breath. 

“But- how do you...how do you know that Jinwoo- that the federation is trafficking victims through these buildings?”

“I traced the real estate listing and the property that it was listed under. Most of them are under false names, but each of the building codes are listed to a developer that goes by the name of Christopher Hann.”

When Lisa steps closer, Jisoo pulls up an image of a man that looks like he could be American with a short buzz cut and a tapered suit that looks professional. 

“He’s listed for every building in South Korea, the United States, and Europe, besides a slight few. When I went through the filings, the owner of the building came back to a man named Jim Frederick. But he doesn’t exist.”

“Because it’s Jinwoo,” Lisa breathes. 

“Exactly,” Jisoo nods. “It’s the perfect cover up because no one actually ever needs to see the owner of the building besides the developer who makes the codes. Jinwoo creates a fake identity, buys up all these properties, and funnels it through an American firm to avoid suspicion.”

“I need to find him,” Lisa says. 

Jisoo whirls around in her chair with an incredulous look on her face and frowns. 

“Did you not just hear what I said about-”

“I know what you said!” Lisa nods quickly. “I heard you, but he did this!” 

“He sent those men, he sent both of them to come kill me and they took everything from me. They killed Chaeyoung and our kid right in front of me!” she seethes. 

“I sat there and I _watched_ it and I couldn’t do anything,” she can feel the tears starting up again but she forces it down, biting her lip to keep her emotions at bay. 

“I need to find him and I have to kill him. Whether or not you help me, I will find him. But I’m coming to you, my only friend that I can trust and I’m _begging_ you,” she pleads. “I’m _begging_ you to help me.”

Jisoo stares at her and Lisa wishes that she knew that the other girl was thinking, that she knew what was running through her head.

“Please, _please_ just tell me how to find him- how to stop this. I’m going to make them pay and even if you don’t help me, I’m going to find him and I’m going to kill every single person that’s involved in this. Just let me know right now so I can walk away.”

Jisoo scoffs, running her hands down her face before she sighs loudly and leaned back in her chair. With her eyebrow cocked like that, Lisa almost thinks that she’s going to call her an idiot and tell her to get out, but the older girl only spins back around in her chair and clicks at a few things on her keyboard. 

Her cell phone pings three seconds later and before she can reach into her pocket and pull it out, Jisoo stands up abruptly and reaches behind the monitor to pull out a 9 mm revolver and pushes it into her chest. 

“I’ve sent you everything that you need to your phone. You’re gonna need this.”

* * *

The massage parlor is located on a busy street near the university campus that’s nearly five miles away. Lisa watches from the other side of the road as she sits in the café, her cup of coffee cold now as she holds the cup between her hands. Students, teenagers, and young couples browse from the outside, window shopping along the line of stores and sharing something over their phones between hushed talking and laughter. 

Lisa downs her coffee over an hour later and orders another one, pulling out her phone and mindlessly scrolling through just to make it look like she’s busy. Every so often, she'll see someone walk into the massage parlor and watch those same people filter out. While she's folding her napkin in her lap, she sees a woman walk in with her daughter, followed by two girlfriends who stroll in arm-in-arm. On the outside, the shop looks normal and Lisa supposes that maybe that’s the point- to not draw attention to yourself by appearing out of place. 

Nearly two and a half hours later, after Lisa watches the two women from earlier leave, the older woman follows not even ten minutes later. 

This time she’s without her daughter. 

Lisa pushes her cup away and reaches into her wallet, pulling out a few loose bills and sliding it underneath her cup. As she stands up, she waves to the barista at the register and moves to leave, the door swinging shut behind her as she crosses the street.

When she steps inside the parlor, she’s immediately greeted by the soft sounds of music from the overhead speakers and the smell of incense that wafts up her nose from the opened container on the counter. There’s a small lounge with plush carpeting and a beige couch that blends in with the wallpaper. There are framed photos of nature and abstract paintings littered along the walls and a coffee table with a few magazines scattered across it. The TV is turned off, so Lisa can see the reflection of the receptionist through the screen when she finally turns around. 

“Hello, welcome to Bloodhound Massage Parlor. Can I help you?”

The receptionist is older, probably in her mid-fifties with gray coloring the edge of her hairline and curls that are piled in a bun on top of her head. She looks like a teacher, but her makeup is so outlandish and overdone that Lisa can’t help but think she looks like a cartoon character. Her smile is too wide and forced, with yellowing teeth peeking out from behind her red-stained lips. The closer Lisa gets to the counter, the more potent her perfume becomes until Lisa nearly has to hold her breath. 

“Can I get a room for one hour, please?”

The old woman hums her approval and looks down at the computer, quickly typing something on her keyboard before gesturing to the one of the couches. 

“I have an opening in ten minutes with one of our girls. You pay up front now and you’ll receive a key card for your room.”

Lisa nods and fishes out her wallet, handing over her card and having it swiped, before the old woman hands her a receipt and smiles widely again. 

“Thank you for your service. Please take a seat and we’ll take care of you shortly.”

Lisa sits down and takes note of the digital clock positioned above the door. The time is wrong, but she says nothing as she glances at the old woman and then back down at her lap. Her leg starts shaking for some reason, but she simply squeezes her thigh and crosses her ankles, pulling her phone out again in order to look busy. 

When she looks back up, it’s to the sound of a soft beeping noise and one of the doors sliding open. A man, probably no older than 30, walks out, straightening his hair and fixing his pants as the door slides shut. He catches Lisa’s gaze and offers her a sleazy smile, his gold tooth glinting underneath the harsh fluorescent lights as he walks past her. 

He thanks the older woman, schedules an appointment in a week from now, and then grabs one of the candy peppermints from the bowl on the counter and pops it into his mouth. 

Lisa stares at the back of his dress shirt until someone is clearing their throat loudly. It’s the old woman. 

“Your room is ready.”

Lisa nods and wipes her hands on her pants, standing up and walking down the hall to the room with the number that’s the same as the one on the back of her keycard. Her fingers shake as she swipes the card and watches the light change from red to green, the door clicking open with a soft sound. 

She steps inside the room, taking note of the absence of a massage table and a large shelf against the far wall full of oils, lotions, essence, creams, and ...lubrication bottles. As she steps closer, she can see boxes of condoms stacked along the bottom of the shelf and a trash bin in the corner. The lighting is dim but there are candles lit throughout the room that gives it a soft and relaxing glow. The curtains are pulled closed but there’s a small cot situated against the other wall and a radio on the adjoining shelf that’s playing R&B music. 

Lisa walks across the room and sits down on the cot, the mattress creaking underneath her weight and the sheets rough underneath her palms. She takes a deep breath and stares at the door; this is the only exit in or out of the room, but she has to get to the back. There has to be another room that the girls are taken through that operates outside of the parlor. 

Just as she’s thinking about how to locate that room, the door slides open and she watches as a thin looking girl walks inside of the room. Lisa's hands ball themselves into fists at her side and the young woman glances up at her quickly before shuffling over to the shelf to retrieve a bottle of lube and then to turn the music up. As she sets the bottle of lube on the small fold-out table, Lisa stares at the girl. 

She takes note of her long, dark hair that’s separated into two pigtails and the concealer that’s heavier under her right eye, most likely to hide a bruise that Lisa can see is beginning to turn green. Her face is small, but then again so is her entire body. Her hips stick out more so than the rest of her body and her shoulders are sharp underneath the white robe. When she pulls at the sash, it opens like a curtain, revealing the baby pink silk nightgown. It barely reaches the top of her thighs and as she shrugs the robe off, the material pools at her feet. Lisa can see the way her other bones stick out as if she hasn’t eaten in a considerable amount of time. 

“What would you like for us to do first?”

Her voice is soft and her smile warm as she stalks closer, her hands coming to rest on Lisa’s shoulders. Lisa doesn’t want to imagine how many times she’s done this or how long she’s perfected the slight cock of her hip and the gentle tone of her voice. 

“My name is Jennie,” she says and her eyes, a luminous dark brown, follow Lisa as she swallows and shifts uncomfortably on the cot. 

“I can do whatever you want,” she murmurs and moves to push one of her straps down her shoulder.

Lisa feels like she wants to vomit and partially like she wants to scream at the same time. 

Just before Jennie can push down the other strap of her nightgown, Lisa catches her wrist, the other girl flinching as her eyes widen and her bottom lip begins to tremble. 

“I-I don’t want to do this…” Lisa says slowly. 

Confusion flashes across her face, her brow rising but Lisa lets her wrist go and gently grabs her by the hips to push her back. 

“I need to find this man,” she says and reaches into her pocket, pulling out the photo of Jinwoo before turning it to her. “Do you know this man?”

Jennie’s eyes widen in fright and she stumbles back, almost slipping on the robe as she whirls around and bolts for the door. 

"Wait-!" 

Lisa is faster, though. She dives off the cot and catches her around the waist, lifting Jennie up as she thrashes and kicks her legs out in front of her, all to no use. Lisa maneuvers her to the other side of the room and tosses her on the cot, immediately covering her mouth with her hand and shaking her. 

“I’m not going to hurt you! I promise!”

Jennie’s eyes are frantic, moving around as if she can calculate someway to escape, but it’s futile. There’s only one way in and one way out. 

“I’m not going to hurt you! I just need to find him, you know him, don’t you?!”

Jennie says nothing, her eyes searching Lisa’s face as she breathes heavily through her nose. 

“Please? Just...I won’t cover your mouth- just- just don’t scream, alright? I promise you that I won’t do anything to you. If you can just tell me if you know where this man is...I - I’m going to kill him.”

If Jennie’s eyes could get any wider, they would have. It almost feels like she stops breathing when Lisa slowly pulls her hand away. Both women stare at each other for what feels like an eternity before Lisa sits up, scooting away and watching as Jennie props herself up against the wall. 

“That’s...that’s Jinwoo,” she whispers. 

“He runs this parlor. Who are you?”

“I’m Lisa,” she says and stares down at the picture in her hands before looking up. Jennie is staring at her and from the slight shake of her leg she can tell that she is just, if not more nervous than her. 

“He...uh- he killed- he killed someone that I loved very much. I need to know where I can find this man so that I can break his neck.”

Jennie says nothing for a long moment, the silence being filled by the music and the steady hum of voices and drawn out noises between the walls. 

“You won’t find him here,” she shakes her head.

“Where would I find him, then?”

“Everywhere,” she shrugs. “He moves like the wind, he’s a ghost. We just do what they say and report back to the compound at the end of the day. No one sees or hears from him unless he wants to be heard of.”

Lisa turns the picture over, laying it down on the cot next to her thigh as Jennie snorts and stares at the shelf full of oils. 

“If you can get us out of here,” she murmurs. “I’ll help you- with what I can- to find him. Jinwoo never lets his girls or his money go very far.” 

And when Jennie slides off the cot, picking up her robe and tying it back around herself, Lisa can feel her heart thud stupidly, mindlessly, and foolishly in some twisted sliver of hope.


	3. a symptom of killing

_Chaeyoung pushes her hair away from her forehead, running her fingers down the side of her face and smiling when Lisa kisses her thumb._

_“You know that I love you, right?”_

_Lisa nods, pushing her face closer to Chaeyoung’s pillow and laughing when the younger girl flicks her nose._

_“I know,” she whispers._

_“How do you know?”_

_Lisa licks her lips, reaching out with her hand to stroke the skin underneath Chaeyoung’s eyes. She looks sleepy, more so than usual, which is why Lisa is already tugging the sheet over the both of them._

_“Because if you were to leave me, I would fall apart.”_

“I need you to take this,” Lisa says, pulling a blade out of the pocket of her jacket and turning the handle towards Jennie. 

The other girl stares at it, her eyes going back and forth between the knife in Lisa’s hand and her own face as she stares back. 

“But, I— I can’t-”

“You _have_ to,”Lisa stresses, moving across the room to grab her hand and push it into the palm of her hand. 

“Take it. You might need it.”

“I’ve never —!”

“I’ve never— you know... _killed_ someone!” She hissed. 

“That’s probably the only way we’re gonna get the hell out of here, sorry.”

Jennie frowns, staring down at the knife in her hand for a long moment. Her fingers curl around the handle and for a split second Lisa almost feels like this whole thing is a mistake. 

That maybe she had no right to drag Jennie into this mess, that maybe everything she was doing was the wrong way to go about this. 

But that’s the thing— the longer she stared at the knife, the angrier it made her. Because in some part of the back of her head, some part that was steadily picking at her brain was the feeling that a knife wasn’t enough.

Every time she closed her eyes, she saw that bullet hole in Chaeyoung’s head and she heard her whisper in her ear that she was pregnant and she felt the warm trickle of her blood as it sprayed her face. 

That knife was the least she could do. Whether or not Jennie wanted to do it seemed irrelevant to her. 

If they were going to get out of here and in order for Lisa to find Jinwoo, they had no choice. Lisa couldn’t worry about Jennie— she could get here out of here, but she couldn’t worry about her. 

Not now. 

“How many people are in that back room?”

Jennie alternates the knife between both hands, shifting from one foot to the other, when she finally decides to lean down and tuck it into the garter belt of her stockings. Her hands are shaking when she straightens up and Lisa sighs, asking her again, when she finally makes eye contact with her. 

“I don’t know…” she frowns. “Maybe - like, five or so guys?” she shakes her head. “They just wait in the back for the van to come pick up the girls that are already here, so the next girls can start their rotation.”

“You guys do this all day?”

Lisa pulls the gun out of the back of her jeans and checks to make sure that the safety is off before she reaches back to slide it underneath her shirt. 

“Different girls go to different places. It all depends on the day,” Jennie murmurs. 

She looks down at her hands and Lisa wants to ask her how long she’s been here, how long she’s been forced to sell herself, but she doesn’t think that it’s something she should be asking, that it’s something that she should concern herself with. 

“I need to get to that back room,” she says quietly. “If I can wait for that van, will it take us straight to the compound?”

Jennie licks her lips, they’re starting to chap at the bottom, and she shakes her head quickly. “The van that comes to pick us up and switch the girls out just takes us to the next parlor, and the next parlor, and so on…”

“Jinwoo won’t be there, though.” 

She steps away from the door to lean back against the wall of oils and the bottles of essence, tugging the sleeve of her robe back up her shoulder when it falls. Her eyes flicker between Lisa’s face and the floor, staring at her for a long second before she sighs. 

“He only shows up every once in awhile, usually if someone has to be replaced,” she shrugs. “He oversees all the new girls that come in.”

Lisa stares at her, her throat feeling tight all of a sudden. 

“Does that happen often?”

“Give or take a few weeks,” Jennie shrugs. She straightens up and takes the knife back out of her stockings. Lisa knows that she doesn’t know what to do with it, that _Jennie_ looks like she doesn’t know what to do with it. 

“Listen…” she sighs. “I—I need you to— to make sure that no one comes back in here. You have to go to the front of the parlor and get the woman to lock the door.”

Jennie’s eyes flash with something in them— fear perhaps, and she immediately shakes her head. 

“I can’t— no, I can’t. You don’t understand— she’ll, I don’t know— but she’ll-”

“Hey,” Lisa frowns, stepping forward in a move to reassure her, but Jennie steps back— like she’s afraid of what she’s going to do. 

“I’m sorry,” Lisa whispers. “It’s just— if I go back there. Shit’s gonna get real crazy. She works for him, right?”

Jennie nods her head slowly. 

“Then you _have_ to get her to close the parlor. If you don’t, she’ll alert someone and then all of this will be over before anything starts.”

It’s not convincing. At least, it doesn’t sound as convincing as Lisa hoped it would, but Jennie is staring at her again—not with that same look of fear before, but of contemplation.

 _“Please,”_ Lisa finds herself begging. And it’s weird to think in her head if it actually works, but Jennie sighs again and jerks her head in a nod, even though she seems more nervous than anything. 

“Knock on the door twice…” she murmurs, her eyes flickering up to Lisa’s face briefly. “Then knock twice again, that’s the signal all the girls use.”

Lisa swipes the card again, watching the light change from red to green and waiting with bated breath as the door slides open. 

Jennie can hear the music in the lobby and if she listens hard enough, she can also make out the sharp tapping sound of a keyboard clicking. 

Lisa shares a glance with Jennie, the other girl swallowing roughly before Lisa gestures her head toward the front. 

Jennie takes a deep breath, partially because she feels like she might vomit on the floor and because her hand holding the knife just won’t stop shaking no matter how tight she grips the handle.

But she moves anyway. 

She steps out into the hallway, the sound of the music becoming even louder as she feels the blood rushing in her ears and the pounding of her heart against her rib cage. She looks over her shoulder quickly, just for a split second, to see Lisa also slip out of the room, her back against the wall as she takes slow, deliberate steps towards the back room. 

When she turns back around, it seems like the hallway is longer than she thought it was. It’s really not, though. She can see the couch and the coffee table that is stacked with magazines as it comes into view. She can also feel the exact moment when her heart drops into her stomach as she sees Mai at the front desk. 

The old woman doesn’t see her at first. She’s too busy typing something out on the computer to see her, so Jennie makes a split decision. 

“Get—get the fuck up,” she trembles. 

Mai doesn’t hear her. She only sees her out of the corner of her eye and suddenly she startles, jumping in place at her desk. 

“What are you doing out of your room?” She scowls. “Where’s your client at?”

Jennie opens her mouth, but it’s like she can’t speak. Nothing comes out of it. Mai pushes her chair back and she shouldn’t look so intimidating. She’s an old woman with a hobble; she couldn’t hit her if she tried, not hard at least, but in what she lacks in physical strength, she makes up for in other ways. 

“Did you hear me? I said what are you doing—” 

“I said GET UP!” she shouts, pointing the knife directly at her. 

Mai freezes, her hands curling around the edge of her desk as she stares blankly at Jennie. 

Her eyes rake up her frame, like she’s sizing Jennie up, like she wants to see how far she’s gonna go. She still doesn’t move from her seat and Jennie swears to herself, her hand shaking as she holds the knife. 

“Lock it! L-Lock the door! Now!”

Mai purses her lips and stands up. She limps around the desk, moving slowly as Jennie watches her. She licks her lips, feeling how dry they are and her hand tightens around the handle when Mai flips the sign over from OPEN to CLOSE. 

“Do you know what you’re doing, hm?” She turns around slowly, tucking her hands into the pocket of her vest and Jennie doesn’t have to say anything for both of them to know. 

No. No, she _doesn’t_ know what the fuck she’s doing. But if it means finally getting out, of finally getting away from all of this, no matter how much of a pipe dream it sounds like then she has to do something. 

“When Jinwoo hears about this...” she chuckles, shaking her head. “Do you know what he’s going to do to you?” 

Her lips twitch into a smile, one of her brows raising as she steps forward. 

Jennie knows. 

She’s seen the girls who’ve gotten out of line, the ones that had been beaten so bad that they could barely walk or sit up without screaming in pain. 

She’s heard of the girls that were shot dead out in the backyard for opening their mouth when they were not supposed to, and although she’s never seen it, she’s heard stories of girls being hung upside down by their feet if they tried to escape. 

So, yes, she does know what Jinwoo would do if he saw her pulling a knife out on Mai or even contemplating the idea of escape. 

Maybe that’s why she’s doing this. Maybe because she’d rather risk actually getting out of here than spend another day spread out on a cot with some stranger on top of her. 

Maybe it’s because she'd rather die than be forced to strip again. 

But she doesn’t want to die. She just wants a fucking way out. 

“Sit—“ Jennie licks her lips. “Sit down and don’t—don’t move,” she gestured to the chair. 

Mai watches her still. Her tongue clicking against the roof of her mouth as she walks slowly over to her desk. Jennie can’t get her hand to stop shaking and she quickly glances over her shoulder, not sure what Lisa is doing but hoping that she’s alright. 

“Where’s that woman?” Mai suddenly asks. 

Jennie’s head snaps back, the old woman is leaning against the front of her desk, her finger tracing the outline of the glass bowl filled with peppermints. 

“Did she put you up to this?” She murmurs. 

Jennie doesn’t say anything, watching Mai continue to stare down at the bowl. 

“You’ve never been this dumb before…” she murmurs. “I can only hope this works out as you thought it would.”

“Yeah…” Jennie says quietly. “Me too.”

When Mai turns her head to watch her, Jennie hears someone shout and it’s the first mistake that she makes when she drops her hand to look over her shoulder. 

All of a sudden, she hears someone yell and before she can react, Mai is charging towards her, the glass bowl raised over her head so she can strike her with. 

Jennie yelps, stumbling back in shock and her foot catching onto the leg of the table as she falls backward. The knife flies out of her hand, skidding across the floor. She hits the ground first, her breath almost being knocked out of her, until she sees Mai swing the bowl down. 

Jennie flips on her stomach, the glass shattering at the last second next to her head and sending shards across the floor. She scrambled to crawl away but Mai grabs a fistful of her hair, yanking her head back as Jennie lets out a sharp cry of pain. 

“You bitch!” Mai spits. “Did you actually think that you could pull a knife on me?!”

The knife was peeking out just underneath the bottom of the couch. And Jennie grabs her wrist with both hands in an attempt to pull herself from her grip, but it’s no use. 

“Huh?! Answer me, slut!”

Jennie swung her arm back, her fist connecting with Mai’s face hard enough that the old woman shouts and lets go of her hair. 

When she’s finally free, Jennie crawls across the floor frantically, reaching for the knife as Mai grabs her leg, puncturing her skin with her nails. 

“You fucking—!”

Jennie flips around, kicking Mai off of her and launches forward to stab the knife through her hand, effectively pinning her to the floor. The old woman screams and Jennie scrambles backward, staring at the knife in her hand and watching the blood pool out along the floor. 

“You bitch!” She shouts. “They’ll kill you! They’ll hang you by your neck and kill you!”

Jennie stands up, looking over her shoulder and then turns back around, watching as Mai writhes on the floor and stares at her with saliva hanging from her lips and tears streaming down her cheeks. 

Jennie remembers when she had first begged Mai to help her, when she didn’t want the man to pin her down to the bed. When he grabbed her around the neck and Mai watched. 

When Jennie cried and she tried to fight and she was hit. She was hit so hard that she could barely open her eyes and all Mai did was stare.

When she wanted to run so many times and all Mai did was slap her across the face. When she traded places with one of the girls because she was scared and too young and Mai made both of them perform anyways. 

It’s all Jennie can think about as she stares down at her. 

It’s all she can think about when she spits in her face and then strikes her across the face with her foot.

* * *

“Lisa!”

Jennie flings the door open, rushing inside as the other woman lifts her gun up to point it at her before she lowers it down just as quickly. 

“Sorry,” she mutters. 

There are two men tied up with tape around their mouths against the wall and another guy seated at the table bound to one of the chairs. He’s the only one conscious and staring at Jennie when she walks over to Lisa’s side. 

Her hands haven’t stopped shaking and she doesn’t think they will any time soon. 

There are legs peeking out behind the file cabinet against the wall and Jennie doesn’t ask, doesn’t even want to know. She just rubs her eyes, runs her hand through her hair and flinches violently when she feels someone touch her shoulder.

“I’m sorry!” Lisa says quickly, pulling away. “I’m sorry for touching you. Are you okay? I heard someone scream…”

She looks genuinely sorry, like in her eyes, they look the same way that they did when Lisa promised her that she wasn’t going to hurt her. 

“I’m—I’m okay,” Jennie nods. She stares at her and that must say something because all Lisa does is nod her head and then turn back around to the guy at the table. 

“What’s the purpose of all this?” The man asks both of them. His head is down, almost touching his chest as he shakes his head. 

When he looks back up, Jennie notices that his bottom lip is split and he has scratch marks across the right side of his face.

“What are you trying to accomplish here?” He chuckles his eyes flickering to Lisa’s face. 

“You felt like saving somebody today? Of saving all these girls?” He shakes his head again. 

Lisa grabs one of the chairs and turns it around, sitting down opposite of the man as Jennie leans back against the wall. She feels kind of nauseous and tired, maybe a little bit of both and she wants to sit, but like by herself, somewhere where she can catch her breath. 

She watches as Lisa slides her phone out of her back pocket and opens the device, turning it around for him to see. 

“Do you know who this is?”

He stares at the screen briefly and when Jennie angles her head to the side, she can only see what looks like an image of a man. 

“Who is this?” Lisa asks again, tapping the screen. “Tell me who this is.”

“I don’t know,” the man says, smirking slightly. He stares at Lisa and tongues the inside of his cheek before looking back down. 

“You do know, though,” Lisa says calmly. 

She turns her phone around and swipes right, the screen changing to a different picture. When she shows him it, he shakes his head again. 

“You’re wasting your _time_ ,” He chuckles. “Do you think that even if I did— that even if I knew just for _one_ second who that was that I would tell you?” 

Lisa stands up suddenly, the legs of the chair scraping against the floor loudly as she circles the table. When she wraps her arm around his neck, the man chokes, trying to throw himself out of her hold before she grabs his head and angles it down. 

“Tell me who that is!”

“I already told you that I don’t know!”

Lisa grabs his nose and Jennie thinks that’s she’s going to try to suffocate the guy but she doesn’t. Instead, she twists it slowly, almost like she’s threatening to break it.

“Tell me!” 

He shakes his head as much as he can and Lisa twists his nose further as she thrashes against the chair and shouts.

“Tell me!” She yells. 

“I don’t know-!” He says, “I don’t know! I don’t know!”

“Yes you do!” She says, “you know how I know that? Do you know how I know that?!”

She snaps her wrist to the side and Jennie squeezes her eyes shut as she hears a sharp distinct snap. The man screams and when Lisa lets him go, his head drops forward, blood leaking from his nose that’s now twisted in at an uneven angle. 

He starts crying and Jennie turns around. She rubs her temples and tries to calm herself down, but she can feel it inside of her, the urge even stronger now to vomit. 

“Tell me who these men are,” Lisa says calmly. “Tell me who they are, okay?”

When Jennie looks over her shoulder, she can see snot and blood mixing together, dripping onto the table as he tries to breathe through his mouth. 

It takes awhile for him to say anything, what with all the blood, but eventually, he licks his lips and blinks up at Lisa. 

“S-Seun…” he breathes out. “His name— his name is...Seun,” he sighs. 

Blood trickles down into his mouth and he spits it out, wincing in the process. 

“The other guy— the other man is— is Seungjae.”

“Where can I find them?” 

She steps closer to the man and grabs a fistful of his hair, yanking his head back as he seethes and clenches his jaw. 

“Tell me where they are. Don’t make this harder.” 

With his head tilted back like that, the blood pools into his mouth, choking him as he starts coughing and trying to pull his head from her grasp.

“Tell me!” She yells. 

“Down at the harbor!” He shrieks. She lets his head go and he leans forward, spitting up blood and coughing profusely. 

“They…” he breathes heavily, “they wait by the harbor for the boat...there’s a shipment today.”

“A shipment of what?”

“A shipment of what—?!” 

“...Of girls,” Jennie murmurs, turning around. 

Lisa looks at her and Jennie swallows, taking the fabric of her robe in her hands and twisting it between her fingers. 

“There are girls...they come in on cargo ships sometimes. Usually from Thailand, the Philippines, even Japan...it only happens if they have a lot of girls to bring over…”

Jennie swallows uncomfortably and squats, putting her head between her knees as she tries to catch her breath. It feels like the room is spinning and the smell of blood, the picture of Lisa breaking his nose and of Mai in the lobby...makes her retch. 

“Thank you for your help today,” Lisa murmurs. 

It’s quiet. 

The only thing Jennie can hear is the sound of footsteps, of Lisa’s, as she walks further away from her. When she picks her head up, she makes the mistake of watching Lisa as she tilts his head back, smoothing his hair down that’s sticking up in place and fixing her hands to the side of his jaw. 

When she blinks again, Lisa snaps his neck, his head rotating in the opposite direction of his neck. 

Jennie drops her head and vomits all over her feet.

* * *

“We’re not waiting for the van, are we?”

Lisa grabs some more paper towels out of the dispenser, pressing some into Jennie’s hands and taking one to clean her own skin off. 

She looks up at the other girl in the bathroom mirror. The lighting is shit, but she can see how pale her face is and the hollowness of her cheeks as she tries to take even breaths. Her hair is still matted in the back, probably from being grabbed, and Lisa nods at her reflection. 

Jennie wipes her mouth again and then bends over, turning the faucet on so she can wash the taste of it out of her mouth. When she stands back up, Lisa turns to face her, her knuckles gripping onto the counter tightly. 

“I’m going to the harbor. You can come with...if you want...I don’t know. You don’t have to,” she shakes her head. 

She knows that Jennie said that she could take her to him. And realistically, she’s probably Lisa’s best shot. But she doesn’t want to bring her along if she doesn’t want any part of this. She can take her somewhere if she has family or something. Maybe she knows a hotel in the area that she can stay at. 

“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” she sighs. Her eyes move to the side as she watches the door and then looks back at Lisa. 

“Besides, I promised you that I would—“

“I know,” Lisa nods. “I just— I just want you to know that you have a choice. You don’t have to come with me if you’re not comfortable with doing so.”

Jennie stares at her for a long moment. It makes Lisa nervous, so she turns around, balling up the paper towels on the counter and throwing it in the bin. 

When she grabs the door handle, Jennie follows after her and that, if anything, seems to signal her okay with all of this.

They unlock the rest of the doors with the master key and there are only two other girls. One, the younger girl that Lisa had saw earlier walking with who she had assumed was her mother. She doesn’t look older than fourteen, but she’s scared and Lisa can tell. She won’t let anyone touch her. 

Jennie, Jennie is able to talk to her though, using a soft voice and taking her hand in her own. The other girl in the adjoining room is older, probably around Jennie’s age, and she starts crying when Jennie tells her what’s going on. 

“What are we going to do?” She whimpers. 

She’s pulling on her robe, trying to cover herself as much as possible and it makes Lisa sick at how much she can see Jennie in her. 

“Get out of here!” She says quickly and pushes the little girl in her direction. 

“You need to go before the van comes. When they find out what happened here and if they still see you….you know that he’ll kill you— he’ll kill _both_ of you.”

The older girl wipes her eyes with the sleeve of her robe and only takes the little girl’s hand when Jennie pushes her in her direction again. 

“Do you have family here? Friends? If not, go to the hospital, okay?”

The girl nods frantically and Jennie grabs her by the side of her face, trying to smile in what could be some form of encouragement, but she looks scared too. 

“It’s okay...just please, get out, okay? Just run and don’t stop running until you get somewhere safe, okay?”

“What…” she trembles. “What— what about you? What—what are you gonna— where are you gonna go?”

Jennie’s eyes flicker toward Lisa and the girl follows her line of sight. It’s unspoken, but at that moment she seems to understand it too.

They clear out the register. Lisa takes all the money out and then breaks open the lockbox underneath the storage compartment in the lobby. There’s cash, credit cards, and different types of jewelry stashed in it. Lisa gives it all to the older girl and tells her to pawn the jewelry. 

“You’ll get a lot of money. It’s all real.” 

She nods, tucking it underneath her arm and pulling the little girl close to her side. 

When Jennie hugs her, she squeezes her arm, pressing her cheek against her own and it feels intimate. Like they’ve known each other for awhile. When she pulls back, the girl wipes her eyes again and then pulls the little girl along after her. 

Just before she opens the side exit door, she looks over her shoulder and nods in their direction. 

“Thank you….for everything,” she whispers.

* * *

They walk to the nearest department store. Just a small shop situated in between a supermarket and a stationery store.

The bell jingles above their heads as they walk in and the man at the counter looks away from his magazine, giving them a quick glance before sighing and sitting back down. 

“Grab whatever’s comfortable for you,” Lisa says. 

Most of the clothing is in the back. In the front of the store, they have tables full of children’s toys, kitchenware that looks like it’s been used before, and second hand shoes lined beside each other on a separate table. 

Jennie walks toward the back and thumbs through a rack of clothes and Lisa leaves her to find something for herself too. 

The store is quiet and there’s barely any people inside, so she doesn’t worry. When she grabs down two pairs of pants from the shelf, she looks over her shoulder and sees Jennie searching for her, her head peeking above the clothing racks. 

Lisa waves her hand and waits for Jennie to join her. She has mostly sweaters in her hands and dark colored, long-sleeved shirts. 

“Are you done?”

“Yes,” she nods. 

“Okay.”

They make their way to the front and the older man puts his magazine away, moving their things down the conveyor belt to ring them up. He bags them in two separate paper bags and then Lisa hands over her card, smiling slightly before she takes her receipt and grabs their things.

As they walk down the street, people glance at Jennie from the corner of their eyes and she can tell it bothers the other girl. She’s still dressed in the robe and the sandals from the parlor. Jennie stares straight ahead and her jaw is clenched together tightly. 

“We’re almost there,” Lisa says quietly. 

They walk for a little longer, probably half a block, before Lisa is leading the way up the steps to a small motel. The building is three stories tall, with a small sign in the window that says ‘Wi-fi and TV included,’ and ‘75,000 won a night.’

Lisa pulls the door open for Jennie and walks inside to the counter. There’s only one woman behind the desk; she’s sitting at a computer and typing away at something when she glances up at them. 

“Hi, would you like a room?” she fixes her glasses and when she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, Lisa can make out the piercings decorated along her cartilage. 

“Yes, please,” Lisa smiles. “Can I have one room? And if possible...with two beds?” 

She can feel Jennie look at her from the corner of her eye, but she ignores it. 

The girl scrolls through the computer, then types in something before she sighs. 

“Uh...we have one room available, but it’s with one bed and a couch. The couch is a pullout, is that okay?”

“That’s fine,” Lisa nods quickly. 

“Alright…” she spins back around in her chair and processes it just as quickly. 

“How long do you need the room for?”

“Just for one night.”

“And will you be paying with cash or card?”

“Card.”

She types in something again and then passes a keypad over to Lisa with a card reader connected to it. 

Jennie takes the bags from her and waits as Lisa swipes her card through the reader. After it processes, the woman hands her a room key with the number 401B and then wishes them a good day.

“Thank you,” Jennie murmurs later while they’re standing in the elevator. 

“It’s no problem,” Lisa shrugs. 

They don’t talk for the rest of the way. When the elevator comes to a stop on their floor, Jennie is the first to step out, walking ahead of her towards their room. She unlocks the door quickly and walks inside, holding the door open for Lisa until she shuts it with her foot. 

The room is simple. There’s a TV placed on the wall. A small desk with a phone, two water bottles, and an extra set of linen sheets. Underneath the desk, there’s a mini fridge and a trash bin. The walls are a warm beige color with mermaid shells along the the frame of the doors. The bedsheets match the wallpaper and the couch is small, with pillows and sheets stacked on top. 

Jennie puts their bags on the floor and walks over to the bathroom, switching the light on and peeking her head inside. 

“I’m...I’m gonna take a shower, okay?”

“Okay,” Lisa nods. “Um...I’m gonna order food. Do you— do you want anything in particular?”

“I’m fine with whatever,” she shakes her head. 

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, really. I’m fine, just get whatever and I’ll eat it.”

“Okay.”

Jennie grabs her bag of clothes and shares a quick look with Lisa before she goes back to the bathroom and shuts the door softly. 

For awhile, Lisa doesn’t do anything. She just takes a seat on the edge of the bed and rubs her eyes. She can hear Jennie moving about in the bathroom and then she hears nothing before the water starts running. 

In all honesty, she feels exhausted. After everything that’s happened, all within the span of a day, it feels like too much. She rubs her eyes again and then takes a deep breath before reaching for her phone and unlocking it. 

She sends Jisoo a text first, a simple _I’m at a motel for the night. Get back to you tomorrow_. Then she switches over to Google and looks for the nearest delivery place that’s closest to her. 

She orders Chinese and since she doesn’t know what Jennie likes, she gets a little bit of everything and then pays over the phone after her order’s complete. 

With the shower still running, she stands up and unpacks the clothes out of her bag. She spreads them out on the couch and then grabs a water bottle off the desk, uncapping it and taking a quick swig. 

Jennie comes out a few minutes later. Her hair is damp and dripping wet on the towel around her shoulders. She looks better, less scared and out of place than she was earlier. Lisa guesses that it’s to be expected. She did stab someone and finally break away from a sex-trafficking ring after God knows how long. 

Her eyes briefly roam over Lisa before she’s walking around to the other side of the bed and climbing on top . 

“Thank you again,” she says quietly, pulling at the front of her long-sleeved tee. 

She looks comfy. The neckline is too big, so part of it exposes her collarbone and her sweats are folded at the waistline, probably to keep them from falling down. 

“Really, it’s not a problem. You don’t have to keep thanking me,” she shakes her head. 

Jennie swallows loudly, glancing at the TV on the wall before she sighs. 

“Then what do I have to do to repay you?”

Lisa stares at her and she doesn’t look away until Jennie finally acknowledges her. Her hands are gripping on to the front of her shirt, balling the hem, and Lisa hates that she still feels this way. 

She hates that Jennie still thinks that she has to prove something to her, that she has to give away a part of herself in order to show her gratitude. 

But what she hates even more is that Jennie thinks that Lisa wants something out of this from her. 

“You don’t have to repay me, Jennie. I’m serious. I don’t— I don’t want anything from you. I mean it. I really don’t.”

She looks down at her hands and nods slowly like she has to process what Lisa is saying, like she needs to understand that there’s a difference between doing something for someone just because you want to, and doing something because you expect to get some form of repayment. 

“I would never ask you to do that. I wouldn’t put you in a position like that, okay?”

“Okay…” Jennie murmurs. “And I’m sorry for assuming that you would,” she adds on. 

“It’s alright.”

They sit in silence for a few minutes. Jennie picks at the material of her sweats and Lisa watches her. She doesn’t know what to say and she doesn’t want to scare her or make the other girl anymore nervous than she has to be. 

“I’m gonna get in the shower,” she says suddenly. 

“Okay, I’ll be right here.”

Lisa chuckles and maybe she’s just seeing things, but she swears that she can see a light flush across her cheeks when she looks down at the mattress. 

She doesn’t take long. She’s too antsy to stand underneath the shower head and she doesn’t want to leave Jennie by herself either. So after she towels herself off and wraps a towel around her head, she steps out to see Jennie arranging styrofoam boxes on the table and ripping apart chopsticks for herself. 

“Oh, the food came.”

Jennie jumps, dropping the chopsticks on the floor and when she stands back up with them, her ears are red. 

“You scared me.”

“Sorry. Also this looks like a lot.”

“I know,” she nods but her eyes linger over the different boxes, her tongue peeking out to lick her bottom lip. 

“Did you order everything off the menu?”

“I didn’t know what you would like...so yeah.”

“I like everything.”

Lisa smiles and grabs the package of chopsticks, ripping it apart and picks up a piece of orange chicken. She pops it in her mouth and chews slowly, watching from the corner of her eye as Jennie grabs the box of lo mein noodles and takes it back with her to the bed. 

They eat quietly; Lisa standing by the desk and tasting a bit of everything. When she feels full, she grabs another bottle of water out of the mini fridge and goes back to the couch. 

Jennie eats as if she hasn’t had anything in the past few days. And Lisa supposes that it makes sense, that from the way that she looked, Lisa doesn’t even want to imagine how long Jennie’s probably gone without a proper meal. 

Maybe that’s why she brings her more boxes and throws the empty ones in the trash bin. When she gives her another water bottle, Jennie pushes the styrofoam box in her hand away, and blushes when she looks up at Lisa. 

“Sorry…” she muttered. 

“Don’t be. You were hungry; I’m actually glad that you ate so much.”

Her ears are still red, so Lisa drops the topic. She gathers all their trash and stuffed it in the bin. Jennie crawls off the bed and goes to the bathroom, washing her hands quickly before she walks back out, accidentally kicking Lisa’s sneakers in the process. 

The ultrasound picture that she had stuck in the bottom of her shoe, falls out and when Jennie reaches down to pick it back up, Lisa snatches it off the floor, the other girl flinching away. 

“I’m sorry,” she says softly. “I—I didn’t mean to—”

“No, I’m sorry,” Lisa shakes her head. She grabs her sneakers off the floor and hurriedly jams it back inside. 

For awhile, neither of them say anything to each other. Jennie just stands by the wall— nervously messing with the end of her shirt and Lisa hates that. 

She hates that she keeps making her feel like that- like she has something or someone to be afraid of. 

“She was pregnant,” she finally says quietly. 

Lisa blinks repeatedly, willing herself not to fucking cry right because she doesn’t have the energy to cry. She wants to be fucking mad. She deserves to be mad and she deserves to be able to cry and to be able to scream. 

But all she feels is exhaustion. Maybe that’s why she sinks to the floor, her back against the bed and her sneakers hanging from her hands. She rubs her eyes with one hand, and Lisa doesn’t even hear Jennie walk the rest of the way over to her side- she doesn’t even hear Jennie sit down on the floor next to her and wrap her arms around herself. 

“That’s the person that you were talking about at the parlor, right? The one that you said you loved?”

Lisa nods and tosses her shoes down on the floor. 

“I’m so sorry,” she says quietly. 

“I am too,” then Lisa swallows audibly and rubs her eyes again. “This is all my fucking fault.”

“You can’t say that-”

“I _can_ ,” she stresses. “I can fucking say that, do you know why?!”

Jennie doesn’t look at her, she just keeps staring straight ahead at the wall, but she does shake her head it’s just too short to notice it. 

“I was there!” she chokes and she can’t believe that as hard as she tried, that she starts crying. Lisa presses the heel of her hand against her eyes to stop herself, but it’s fucking useless. 

“I was there through everything,” she cries. “I was always there whenever he needed someone to be taken care of. I was there whenever he needed someone to be punished. I was there whenever he needed me.”

Lisa wipes her eyes and tries to calm herself down, but she can already feel herself slipping away. She can still feel the blood all over her face and she can feel the way she had screamed for them to let Chaeyoung go until it was too late. 

“And when I wanted to leave...and when I finally built up the courage to do it...I fucking left. I left and I thought that it would be okay,” she cries. 

Lisa drops her head into her hands and she hates that her hands start shaking. That as hard as she tries to stop them from doing so, they won’t stay still. 

“And then when I tried-I tried to start over!” she sobs. “I tried to run away from everything and I-I- I met her…” Lisa violently wipes her eyes away. 

“I met her and all I did—” she gasps. “All I did was— all I did—lie to her.”

“I lied to her every single day and she never even questioned anything that I said to her.”

“She didn’t deserve that,” Lisa cries. “She didn’t deserve to suffer because I couldn’t tell her the truth.”

“It’s my fault that she’s dead,” Lisa whimpers. 

As she squeezes her eyes shut, the tears drip down her cheeks and it feels like everything is hitting her all at once again. It’s like she has to go back and relieve it and relieve it every fucking second and she’s sick of it. 

She can feel Jennie get up and move away from her. And she can hear her moving around in the bathroom, but she doesn’t look up until Jennie is kneeling down in front of her and pushing tissue paper into her hands. 

She doesn’t say anything as she wipes her face. Lisa balls the tissue paper up in her hand and watches as Jennie stands back and walks over to crawl back on the bed. 

The mattress dips with her weight and Lisa looks over shoulder as Jennie points to the digital clock on the nightstand. 

“The boats dock at the harbor at 11.”


	4. a shot glass for good luck

As soon as the door shuts behind Lisa, Jennie grabs the remote from the middle of the bed and switches the TV on.

_BREAKING NEWS_

“We’re following reports of a possible murder-kidnapping that happened earlier this morning in the Yangcheon district. Police were responding to a phone call that they received earlier about a possible murder victim and came across a grizzly scene. Please be warned that the images that you are about to see may be disturbing for some viewers.”

The screen changes to an apartment, all of its furniture turned over and broken up or smashed into pieces. There’s blood on the walls and all over the carpet like someone had struggled to get away but it wasn’t enough. 

“Police have identified the victim as 30-year-old Park Chaeyoung, but are still trying to identify the second individual that also shared the apartment with the victim.”

There’s a photo of a woman on screen and she’s smiling, half of her hair pinned back and the rest of it falling past her shoulders. She looks like she’s posing but it’s hard to tell because she’s seated at a table and someone out of the frame is resting their hand against her cheek. 

“Police are still trying to process the crime scene but have concluded that the apartment was broken into between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. with no signs of forced entry. Robbery was not the motive, since there are no valuables missing, but authorities are combing the area and taking steps to figure out who the perpetrators are behind this grizzly murder.”

* * *

**2004**

There are so many girls. 

Lisa stares around the room, watching as they all stand side-by-side, much in the same way that she is as other girls file into the room. Some of them are older, maybe two or three heads taller than Lisa is, so they’re probably older. Some are younger too, looking nervously around the room and trying to hold onto the girl’s hand of whoever is beside them. 

The room is hot and Lisa wipes at the sweat collecting on her hairline and tries not to gag as the smell of bodies and musk clog her nose. Someone shuffles in beside her and she’s forced to scoot over, her shoulder nearly pressing into the edge of the windowsill as she tries to make space. 

No one really looks at each other and she supposes that there’s not really a reason to. Why would you? 

No one says anything, just the light murmuring of voices and hushed whispers that travel throughout the packed room and Lisa closes her eyes, leaning her head against the window as she tries to catch her breath. 

She feels sick. 

The neckline of her shirt is sticking to her skin and her legs ache from running for hours last night. She could barely crawl out of the cot that was pushed up against the wall, but if you didn’t come for morning roll call, you would be punished. 

Lisa doesn’t know what they do to you, but she heard a girl screaming one morning and when she saw her two days later, her arm had to be put into a sling because it had been broken.  
There’s not usually this many girls in the room, so more must have come in last night or yesterday. When Lisa opens her eyes again, she tries to see if she can recognize a few faces. There’s a short girl with a shaved head standing on the opposite side of the room, the girl that Lisa had given her lunch to because she was so hungry. There’s another girl with shoulder-length dark hair that had bandaged Lisa’s fingers after she had been hit so hard that her fingers wouldn’t stop bleeding. 

Another girl, younger than Lisa, probably no more than 10 years old, had followed her to their cramped room and wouldn’t go to sleep until Lisa crawled into the cot beside her. She had shook beside her and Lisa hadn’t cared to ask- she didn’t want to know why she was here or what her name was. The less connected she felt to the other girls here, maybe the easier it made it to survive. Lisa had pulled her shirt loose from her grip and had slipped out once she fell asleep. 

If girls were caught sharing beds, then that was seen as a violation of one of the rules and you would be punished. 

When the little girl makes eye contact with Lisa across the room, she turns her head away quickly and stares straight ahead. She can still feel her stare on the side of her face and it makes her hands ball into fists at her sides. 

The door slides open and the room falls into immediate silence as two women and a man walk inside. Lisa recognizes both women. The taller one with the pressed slacks and the ironed shirt had processed her the very first day she came through the compound. She had given Lisa one quick glance before handing her things to make her bed and stamping a number on the inside of her wrist. 

She had felt like chattel. 

Like the chickens that her uncle used to keep on his farm, whose feathers were clipped with tags and the eggs that he carried into the house when it was hot, or the head that he cradled in his hands before tossing it in the trash. 

The other woman was slightly smaller and she had a camera around her neck, her hands gripped to it tightly as they moved in front of the first row of girls along the opposite side of the room. 

“Today, you will be getting your first tests done,” the man said to the room full of girls. “Each of you will be given the same hairstyle before you start your training for the day.” He reached into the pocket of his pants and pulled out a pair of scissors encased in a leather pouch. One of the girls standing beside Lisa, shifted nervously and she thought that she heard someone sniffle behind her and couldn’t help looking over her shoulder. 

It was a girl with long hair, almost down the middle of her back. Half of her hair concealed her face as she looked down and Lisa couldn’t even imagine what that must feel like.  
Hair was like a part of you. It grew at the same time that you grew and it changed almost at the speed that an individual could change. It was almost like the last thing you had.

Lisa turned back around and watched as they went down the line, snipping off the hair of some of the girls standing next to each other and then stepping away as the woman proceeded to take a picture of them from the front and then on either side. 

Some of the girls were skipped over, mostly the younger girls and the ones that were older, were sent to the other side of the room to stand with each other. As each person got their hair cut, strands and locks fell to the ground, collecting on the floor as cries steadily got louder and the camera shuttered with each photo taken. As more girls were divided up and split between the other, Lisa eventually came to stand up straight when the individuals stood in front of her. 

The man was thin, his nose bent at an odd shape and his hair cut close to his ears, as he looked down at Lisa. She averted her eyes to the ground, but the tall woman put a finger underneath her chin and angled her face back up. 

“Keep your head up.” 

Lisa bites down on her tongue as she feels the man grab her chin and turn her head to the side. Outside the window, she can see the grass blowing in the window and the hill just a few feet away that some of the girls would chase after each other on. In the glass, she can also see the reflection of the man as he takes strands of her hair and snips them off. 

They fall around her like leaves, some catching onto the collar of her shirt and others falling in her hand before she lets them slip through her fingers. As she stares down at the ground, Lisa thinks about her hair that her mom had brushed before bed. She thinks of how her friends had braided it back before the start of class and how her mother stuck a flower through her braids when she saw her. 

She saw her childhood and she felt the warmth that came with being loved by someone. She felt that slip away as her chin was tilted back up and the woman with the camera pointed the lens directly at her. 

When she was told to turn to her side, she saw her reflection in the window and the girl that was standing behind her with equally wide eyes and trembling lips that knew what was going to happen next for her. 

“Turn back around, Lalisa.”

When she faced forward, the woman looked her up and down one last time before the continued on to the girl beside her. Lisa blinked and she saw the back of every other girl's head in front of her. She saw the same style as her own and as she glanced down at her feet, she saw what was left of her. 

She saw Lalisa for the last time spread across her shoes.

* * *

**2005**

“Stand up!” 

Lisa’s knees protest as she stands up, ramrod straight, the blood still cooling on her knuckles from the raps that she had gotten earlier for passing out during training.

She’s tired. She’s so tired that she can’t even wince in pain. 

Lisa blinks straight ahead and watches as the flies buzz ahead on a pile of trash and a dead dog that was dragged to the side of the road. Its bloody carcass can still be smelt all the way across the road. She can see the matted fur, the blood drying on the asphalt, and its disfigured limbs that twist into odd places. 

Lisa swallows again and can feel the saliva as it works its way down her throat. She can feel Sarah move behind her, and she doesn’t even have to turn her head before she’s lifting her arms into the correct position. 

The semi-automatic rifle is lifted over her head, the strap tugged into place around her neck as she grips the barrel and places her finger on the trigger. 

“Aim at it.” 

Her accent is so thick that it’s hard to understand it, but Lisa does. She points the gun straight at the carcass of the dog and feels the vomit in the back of her throat before she can even hurl. 

“Aim at the head this time.”

* * *

**2007**

“You ever think about what it would be like to get out of here?”

Lisa looks up from where she’s laid across the mattress. It’s nearly 1 o’clock in the morning and the window in their room had been shuttered earlier, the blinds pulled close and the locks turned on for the night. 

Lisa can’t see her face because it’s so dark in the room, but she turns over on her side and looks over in the direction of the other bed. Faintly, she can see the outline of a body on the other cot and she blinks her eyes in order for them to adjust to the room. When she doesn’t answer her, the girl asks again and Lisa turns back on her side to stare at the window. 

“Where would we go?” she whispers. 

It’s been three and a half years. Their towns have burned down. Their schools, their families, all of their friends are gone. Where are they supposed to go when there’s no one to go back to? 

“You don’t ever think about your family?”

She thinks about them every day. She thinks about her father and the way he had sat down in the kitchen and ate breakfast with her before the sun would rise. The way that they would talk about simple, mundane things before Lisa would leave to walk to school. 

She thinks about her mother and how gentle she was with her. The way that she would sometimes stand in the doorway of her bedroom and watch her do her homework and even if she didn’t know how to, she would offer to help Lisa. 

She remembers eating around them and how exhausted she would be at the end of the day, but by listening to their conversations and watching them smile over hot pot, she would instantly make her feel better. 

She remembers all of it. Every single day. 

“What is there to think about if they’re gone?”

The mattress on the other cot creaks with the weight of the girl and Lisa stares at the paint chipping off of the wall. She can hear the fan spinning softly above them, but it’s still humid in the room. She had kicked the blankets off of her, but had seen the other girl grab them and toss it back on her mattress. 

“How do you really know that they’re gone?”

Lisa opens her mouth, but then she closes it again. 

“I just mean-” she starts. “Did you actually _see_ them die, like with your own eyes?”

“Why are you asking me all of these questions?”

“Because I want to leave…” she whispers. 

“Then leave,” Lisa says. “I don’t care what you do. Just keep me out of it.”

“You don’t want to go find your mom and dad? Your grandparents? _Anyone?_ ”

Lisa wants to scream. Of course, she does! She would pull the blinds off this window and crawl out herself, but where would she go? She has no idea where she’s at or even how far away she could be from the nearest town. And her home?

She may not have seen her parents be killed, but she remembers her home. 

She remembers the furniture being turned over. She remembers the drawers that were emptied out and the jewelry that her mother always wore on the weekend or when she went into town, missing from her nightstand. 

She remembers the blood on the floor and the broken picture frames surrounded by all that glass. 

There is no home anymore. 

“There isn’t anyone to find.” 

Lisa mostly says it to herself, but she can hear the mattress creak again as the girl moves around before finally standing up and moving across the room. 

She stands at the end of her mattress and Lisa shifts up on her elbows. She’s not dressed in the usual garments that they wear to sleep. Instead, Lisa can make out their training uniforms and the hat that she must have shoved on her head. With her hair tucked underneath it, she looks like a man. 

“Come with me,” she murmurs. 

Lisa thinks that her name might be Rina. She’s not sure; she’s only heard it a few times here and there, but she’s not close to her. She’s not close to anyone. But maybe that’s why she’s even approaching her- this place sort of makes you feel like you could be close to anyone. 

“I won’t go with you,” Lisa shakes her head. 

The other girl sucks her teeth and moves forward, kneeling on the bed as she crawls over halfway across the mattress. 

“I know my dad...” she sighs. “I know that my mom, I know that they’re out there.”

“No they’re _not_ ,” Lisa whispers. “If they were, then why are you here?”

“Because I was taken!” she whispers harshly. “You were taken, the girls in the other room! We all were!” she hisses. 

She moves across the mattress and Lisa watches her as she looks over at the window that sealed shut. She thinks that Rina might be crying, what with the way her shoulders shake in the dark, but she doesn’t say anything. 

It’s silly to think that she can run away. It’s silly for Rina to assume that someone out there is still looking for her- as if there’s someone out there who loves her. 

There isn’t. 

“If they find you, they’ll kill you.”

There’s no question about that. 

One day, Lisa had stood out on the front lawn and watched the cars drive away on the other side of the fence. She had walked down to the gate and watched the windshield until she could no longer see the shape of the van. When she had walked back up the grass to the front of the compound, one of the men was seated next to the door and gestured his head at the road. 

“There’s nothing out there for you,” he had sighed. 

The glasses on his face had shielded his eyes and the sun was beating down hard, sweat was already collecting on his hairline and the tip of his nose. 

“No one out there cares about kids in here.”

And Lisa had believed him. 

"I would rather die out there than live another day in this room like an animal,” she said softly. “I’m not an animal. I have thoughts and feelings and I am a human- I’m not a dog that needs to be told when to eat, how to walk, or when to sleep.”

An animal.

Lisa hated that word and she hated what Rina was insinuating. She looked over at her in the dark and tried to think of something to say back to her, but the girl was already moving off of her bed. 

Her footsteps were quiet as she moved across the room and reached under her blankets to take something out and shove it underneath her shirt. Lisa watched her the whole time and even when she sat up, she didn’t know why her body couldn’t move. She didn’t know why she couldn’t follow her. 

“Please, Rina,” she whispered. 

She might have looked over her shoulder at Lisa, but it was too dark in the room. It was too dark to see the way her bottom lip had trembled or how tightly she had gripped on to the handle of the door knob. It was too hard to see the way she shook her head. 

“No,” she whispered back.

The following morning, while they’re being herded out for roll call, Lisa looks up at the glare of the sun and nearly stumbles into the girl in front of her when she comes to an abrupt stop.  
All of the other girls have stopped walking as well and Lisa steps out from behind her, pushing through a few other people, until she’s able to see what everyone’s looking at. 

It’s a girl. 

She’s hanging upside down by her feet but her face is nearly unrecognizable. It looks like she was beaten to death. Her eyes are swollen shut, her lip is busted, and there’s scratches and cuts all over her face. Her hands are bound together and swaying with the way her body moves as the breeze comes in. 

The rope holding her feet hangs from the edge of the roof but it’s not hard to see that’s been hanging here for probably a few hours. 

It’s Rina. 

Lisa stumbles back and turns around quickly, pushing past a few girls that are standing with their jaws slack and some who are covering their eyes. She almost falls over in the grass, but she catches herself before she can and grabs a hold of the wall as she bends over and vomits.

* * *

**2010**

Lisa is 20 years old when she is first kissed. 

She’s sitting in a car, parked somewhere near the back of a restaurant that they’ve just finished eating at. The woman, Carmen, had smiled all night. She had told her jokes that were somewhat funny and listened intently as Lisa made up stories and told them to her as if they were true. 

Before they had even left the restaurant, Lisa had watched the way she kept touching her hands and moving her hair over her shoulder as if she needed to impress her. 

She didn’t. 

When they had finished eating, they walked back to her car and before even leaving the parking lot, Lisa had leaned over the console and kissed her on the mouth. Her lips were chapped and her angle was off, but Carmen had kissed her back and threaded her fingers through her hair, pulling her nearly in her lap. 

She felt weird. Weird because she didn’t like kissing her. She didn’t like the emotional detachment that came with touching someone like this and pretending to be into someone that she wasn’t. 

But she remembers all the ways that she had been coached. When she places her hand on Carmen’s hip, rubbing at her skin, she remembers how Mai had told her how to touch a woman. When she bites down on her lip, she remembers practicing with her roommate as Mai watched on and told them to start over again and again. When her left hand slides up the front of her dress and grabs a hold of her chest, Carmen sighing quietly in her ear, Lisa remembers the way Mai had showed her where to force herself. 

It’s all mechanical. Devoid of emotion and detached from any feelings. 

So when Carmen pulls away to kiss down the length of her jaw, Lisa stares out the window of her car and watches the rain pelt the glass. She watches the back of Carmen’s head as she sighs into her ear and tugs on her lobe with her teeth. 

She fakes the sound of arousal and pushes into her touch just as she was taught. When she presses a kiss to the edge of her mouth, Lisa slips her hand into the pocket of her coat at the same time and draws the knife out. 

Carmen doesn’t even have time to react before Lisa is driving it right through her stomach. Carmen seizes up in her arms and Lisa pulls her close, nearly into her chest, as she forces the knife in deeper and twists the blade with her wrist. 

She can hear the blood gurgling in her mouth and the way that her fingers grab ahold of her shoulders in alarm. When Carmen makes a choked out sound, Lisa slides the knife out of her and pulls back, tilting her face up so she can see her. 

Carmen’s lips are covered in blood and her eyes are dark, the light slowly fading out of them as she stares up at Lisa. 

The other girl pushes her away, laying her head against the window and wipes the blood off her knife, on her coat before shoving it back in her pocket. Carmen’s fingers twitch in her lap and she tries to talk, but there’s too much blood in her mouth and it steadily drips out as she chokes on it. 

Lisa pulls her hood over her head and opens the door of the passenger side, slamming it shut behind herself and walking off in the opposite direction underneath the downpour.

* * *

**2014**

Lisa is running so fast that her lungs burn. She pumps her legs in the direction of the road and keeps going until she feels like she can’t go anymore. Her calves burn and her fingers are nearly frozen from the cold, but she doesn’t stop. 

The sun is going to set soon and she has to get out of the woods before they do. Once nightfall hits, it’ll be too difficult to keep track of where she’s going and how much distance she’s put between herself and the compound. 

Her feet ache and she knows that she’s bleeding on her side because she was hit earlier, but she can’t stop and take care of that now. 

She just has to keep running and she does. She runs until she feels dizzy. She keeps running until she’s almost out of breath. She keeps running until she spots a motel off the side of the road, a gas station beside it that is nearly empty, but the neon sign is still flashing with the word ‘OPEN’ in the window. 

She holds the side of her waist and limps the rest of the way down the road. Her hands are shaking and although she doesn’t want to think about it, she can feel the blood steadily dripping down her side and staining her jacket. 

There’s only three other cars parked in the lot, but Lisa can see the woman that works inside, moving around the desk and straightening a pile of magazines so they look more presentable.

The bell on top of the door jingles as she walks inside and the woman looks up, offering her a quick once over before she moves back behind the desk. 

“You need a room?”

Lisa takes a deep breath before she answers, pressing her hand more firmly into her side so she can blunt some of the blood flow. She settles for giving a jerky nod and holds up a finger. 

“I just…” she sighs. “ I just- I just need it for the night. One bed.”

The woman turns around to take a key off the wall behind her and then starts to type something out on the computer. 

Lisa glances down at her hand, pulling it away from her jacket to see some of the blood on her fingers. She swallows quickly and tries to focus on the television that she can hear playing in the back and the radio on the coffee table that’s buffering between two different stations. 

The light is flickering over the computer and some of the posters on the wall are peeling off, one that’s barely hanging on to a piece of tape stuck to the wall. 

“Here, you go. That’ll be 70 dollars.”

The woman slides the key over the desk along with a few papers that Lisa needs to sign and she limps over to the desk, taking the pen with shaky fingers and signs her name across the papers in front of her. She hands her the money in her pocket and watches as the woman counts it out before she nods her head and tells her where her room is located. 

“Enjoy your stay.”

Lisa steps out of the front office and walks down the sidewalk, looking for the number that matches the back of the keys. 

When she finds her room, she puts the key in the lock and opens the door, walking inside quietly and flipping the light switch on that’s located on the wall. 

Lisa immediately dumps her bag on the floor and moves to the desk situated against the wall. She pulls open the drawers and digs through, tossing the tissue box out, throwing the bag of coffee grounds to the floor, and setting the Bible on the counter. 

“Come on,” she mutters. 

She moves over to the nightstand and sifts through the junk on the shelf, throwing the magazines on the ground before a pen falls out and rolls across the carpet. Lisa bends down, snatching it off the ground and limps into the bathroom, throwing the door open and grabbing down the bottle of alcohol peroxide under the sink. She pushes the shower curtain back and climbs in the tub, sliding down to the ground and pulling her jacket off, followed by her shirt. She unscrews the cap on the peroxide and sets it on the ledge, before she rips off some of her shirt and puts it between her teeth. 

Lisa looks up at the ceiling, blinking away some of the moisture that she can feel collecting behind her eyes and leans back over to grab the peroxide to pour it over the gunshot wound.  
She screams as soon as the liquid washes over it. Her teeth bite into the material of her shirt and she quickly puts the peroxide back on the ledge before grabbing the pen and hurriedly uncapping it. She throws away the cap and leans over, counting down from five in her head, before she sticks it inside her skin. 

The pain is so intense that Lisa squeezes her eyes shut, but she has to hold onto the pen, so that she can pull the bullet out of her. Blood is pooling out of her side and as she digs it in even further, Lisa feels her teeth tear through the material. Her hands are covered in blood, but she keeps going until she can feel the pen hit something solid inside of her. 

Saliva is dripping down her chin and her hands are shaking, but she twists the pen to the side until she can push the bullet to the side. The harder she pushes it, the more the pen slides forward until she can see the bullet pop out. 

The casing falls in the tub, blood pooling underneath her and Lisa almost knocks over the peroxide, reaching for it again so she can pour it on the wound. Lisa empties nearly the whole bottle on herself, the tub smelling of antiseptic and chemicals as she falls back against the tile. Just before she passes out, she stares up at the shower head and she almost wants to reach for the knob, but her vision gives out before she can do anything.

* * *

**2016**

Lisa stares at Chaeyoung as she sleeps. The sheet is barely covering her body and the window is still open, so she moves across the room, sliding the window shut and pulling the curtain close. 

When she hears the mattress creak behind her, Lisa looks over her shoulder and watches as Chaeyoung turns on her side, pulling the blanket over her chest and opening her eyes slowly. 

“What are you doing up?” she yawns. 

Some of the light from the curtain spills through and illuminates the side of her face. There are lines from the pillow across her cheek and her hair is a mess, but it makes Lisa smile as she shakes her head. 

“I was just closing the window,” she murmurs. 

She walks back over to the bed and Chaeyoung opens the blanket up for her, scooting over so Lisa can slide in beside her. The mattress is warm and Chaeyoung is naked underneath, her hand reaching over to grab Lisa’s hip and tug her close to her side. 

“Are you okay?”

“I’m alright,” Lisa nods and runs her hand down her back. Her skin is so smooth and soft underneath her fingers and Chaeyoung sighs against her neck, her breath is warm and she can feel the goosebumps along her skin as her fingers drift. 

“Go back to sleep,” she whispers. 

“I can’t sleep if you’re not here.”

Lisa rolls her eyes and even without looking at her, Chaeyoung slaps her chest, causing both girls to laugh quietly in the dark. 

Lisa’s hand slides down her side and Chaeyoung makes a noise in the back of her throat as she pulls her leg to rest over her own. Lisa strokes the skin of her thigh and giggles when Chaeyoung angles her head to press a kiss to her neck. 

“Go to _sleep_ ,” she stresses. 

“I will, I will,” Lisa whispers, but both of them know that isn’t true. 

For awhile, they lie in complete silence, the only sounds are the traffic outside and the sound of their collective breathing in the dark. When Lisa feels Chaeyoung move beside her, she pulls away so the other girl can lean up on her elbow. 

Her hair falls messily over her shoulder and Lisa pushes it away, but it just falls back into place like it’s supposed to be there. 

Chaeyoung bends down to kiss her cheek, the tip of her nose, and both of her eyelids before Lisa grabs her by the side of her face so she can look at her. 

“What do you think about leaving?”

The smile immediately slides off of Chaeyoung’s face and Lisa, who had been prepared for this, moves to sit up against the headboard. 

“What?”

“I just- I just wanted to know if you ever thought about leaving...like going somewhere else.”

“Leaving New Zealand?” she frowned. “I-I...why?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugged. 

Chaeyoung huffed and shoved her lightly. “What do you mean, _‘I don’t know?’_ Then why ask me that?”

“Because I don’t want to go, if you don’t.”

Chaeyoung stares at her for a long minute and Lisa looks down at her lap, pulling the sheet over her legs as Chaeyoung clears her throat. 

“Why do you want to leave New Zealand, Lisa?”

_Because I’m scared._

_Because I’ve been here too long- because this wasn’t supposed to be serious._

_Because I don’t know how to tell you that I need to keep running until I feel safe again._

Lisa opens her mouth and it should be something that she could just say out loud to her, that it should be something that she doesn’t have to keep from Chaeyoung, but for some reason she can’t bring herself to say what she knows the other girl deserves to hear. 

“I haven’t seen my mother in a long time,” she murmurs. “I just...I worry about her. Now that she’s older, I just don’t want to be so far away from her.”

It shouldn’t be this easy to lie to her face, but Lisa finds the words before she has time to stop herself. And Chaeyoung- all Chaeyoung does is stare at her, her eyes searching her face for the truth and it makes her sick that she won’t even think that she’s lying. 

“Your mother?” she whispers, licking her lips. “Where...where does she live?”

Lisa looks over her shoulder, at the picture of Chaeyoung with one of her college roommates in front of Namsan Tower on the wall. 

Lisa swallows and reaches forward to take her hand, rubbing the skin of her knuckles softly. “In South Korea.”

“Oh,” she whispers. 

The sheet falls to her waist and Chaeyoung doesn’t hesitate to pull it back up, tucking it underneath her arms as she shifts closer to Lisa. 

“You want to move to South Korea?”

There’s a silent question of whether or not she wants Chaeyoung to come with her and Lisa nods, to the first question and to the one that she knows the other girl is thinking about in her head. 

“Would you be okay with that?”

Chaeyoung licks her lips and pulls at the fabric of the sheet, flipping her other hand over so Lisa can lace their fingers together. 

“I need-” she starts and then stops, before taking a deep breath. “I need to think about something like that. I have a life here- _we_ have a life here- and I don’t know how I would feel about leaving all of that behind to move to South Korea.”

“I understand that. I just...I just wanted to know. It doesn’t have to be now, or a year from now, or even three years from now. I just wanted to know.” 

Chaeyoung looks up at her, her bottom lip worried between her teeth and nods. “Thank you for asking me. I’ll think about it and I’ll...I’ll let you know, okay?”

Lisa nods and opens her arms, watching as Chaeyoung crawls across the bed to lay down on her chest. 

“Okay,” she whispers.

When they eventually settle back down and Chaeyoung drifts off to sleep in her arms, Lisa will stare at the digital clock on the dresser and the foldable calendar that Chaeyoung had picked up from the dollar store. 

Whether or not Chaeyoung decides to come with her, she’s going to leave exactly a year from now.

* * *

**Present day**

Lisa stares at the boats out on the water. She can smell the salt from the sea and hear the waves as they lap at the dock. She pushes her hands into the pocket of her jacket and turns around on her heels, walking off in the opposite direction where sailing boats are chained together on the opposite end of the dock. 

Lisa walks all the way down to the end of the line, looking over her shoulder quickly before she steps down and climbs inside the boat. 

There are life jackets bundled together under the compartment behind the seat. A lifesaver is strapped to the side of the hull and Lisa ducks down, running her hand along the inside of the boat until she feels her hand hit something hard. 

She turns around and grabs the knob, twisting it counter clockwise, until she can hear the silent pop of the compartment as it opens. She opens the compartment and pulls out the bottle of kerosene wedged behind the matches and bundles it up, tucking it underneath her other arm. 

When she slides it back into place, Lisa moves to stand up and climbs out of the boat, shoving the matches in her pocket and uncapping the bottle of kerosene. She waits for a few seconds, staring over her shoulder at the figures on the other end of the dock that still haven’t moved from their place. 

When she turns back around, she starts dousing the boat with the kerosene and walks along the entire end of the dock, doing the same to every boat chained together on the line. The bottle empties out as she circles back to the last boat and Lisa tosses the kerosene into the water, watching the water ripple until the bottle sinks underneath and bubbles form on the surface. 

She pulls out the matches from her pocket and stands back, smelling the chemicals and the salt mix together in a combination that causes her hands to tremble. When she looks down, she runs the match against the side of the box and watches as it catches on, the flame flickering to life and blazing before her eyes. 

Lisa doesn’t even wait before she tosses the match onto the boat in front of her. 

The reaction is almost instantaneous. The first sailboat goes up in flames, the sails catching on and bursting into flames as the fire licks at the wood and peels off the leather padded interior seats. When the sails of the first boat begin to billow and fall apart, the other boat goes up in flames and the same reaction continues until the entire deck is nearly engulfed in flames. 

Lisa steps back and turns around, walking away as she can start to hear voices in the distance and the frantic scurry of feet from across the street. She can smell the smoke even as she climbs back into the car that she parked behind the building. When she rolls the window up, she can see the black smoke as it climbs through the sky and the edge of the water that’s going up in flames. 

When she turns the key in the ignition, she sees two figures suddenly start walking in the opposite direction of the dock. There’s a plaza just a few blocks away that’s connected to a karaoke bar, a bank, and an unassuming convenience store with one of the windows boarded up. 

Lisa follows after them, turning the headlights off and maintaining a distance between the two men as the car slowly inches forward. It would be hard to see the car since it’s so late at night and with the dock going up in flames behind her, it’s enough of a distraction that no one’s going to pay attention to a car clawing along the street. When the men step off the sidewalk and move to cross the street, one of them looks over his shoulder and Lisa throws the gear shift into drive, the car lurching forward as she presses down on the gas and floors it. 

The tires squeal against the asphalt and they don’t have enough time to make it across the street. Lisa turns the steering wheel sharply and sends the car forward. One of the men gets thrown onto the windshield, the glass cracking on impact, while the other gets thrown to the side, half of his body getting caught underneath the tires as Lisa sends the car straight ahead before coming to a complete stop. 

She throws open the door and walks around the side of the car, staring down at Seun, whose face is all scratched up and his body that’s twisted at an odd angle because of the car. He’s writhing in pain, but he’s still alive which Lisa had wanted. She bends down, lifting him up underneath by his arms and drags him over to the other side of the car, throwing the door open and climbing inside so she can drag him across the backseat. 

Seungjae has a black eye, and one of his ribs may be cracked, when Lisa circles back around the car and pulls him off the hood. He’s groaning in pain, his lip split and blood pooling out of his mouth as Lisa lifts his arm over her head and stuff him in the passenger seat. 

He can barely talk, but he’s delirious as Lisa settles him on the seat and reaches over to buckle him in with the seatbelt. 

“Safety first, right?” she chuckles. She pats his cheek and slams the door shut, walking around to the driver’s side and turning the car back on. She pushes the gearshift back in reverse and makes a sharp u-turn, the tires leaving track marks as she drives down the opposite side of the road. 

The dock is completely engulfed in flames. Through her window, she can see the huge billow of black smoke that travels up into the air and the ambulance and police lights that flash in the distance. She comes to a stop at one of the traffic lights and Seungjae lifts his head up, groaning in pain and spitting up more blood. 

“L-let me…” he chokes out. “Get..get me...out of this car.”

The light turns green and Lisa presses on the gas, turning on to the next street and merging into oncoming traffic. 

“No can do,” Lisa chuckles and spares a quick glance at Seungjae, turning his chin so he can look right at her. 

“Do you remember me?” she quirks her eyebrow. 

He can’t see out of his right eye, but he stares at her and it almost makes her want to laugh because Seungjae is actually thinking it over in his head. She can see the way his eyebrows furrow, and it’s incredible how he has to retrace his memory but Lisa can’t forget. 

She can’t forget either of their faces. She can’t forget the way they had waltzed through her home. She can’t forget the way that they had taken her entire life away from her in just a matter of seconds. 

She’ll never forget. 

“It’s okay if you don’t remember,” she smiles and shoves his face away. “You will.”

She accelerates onto the highway, swerving through traffic and smiles to herself as Seungjae starts struggling against the seatbelt and trying to grab ahold of the door to throw it open. 

“LET ME OUT OF HERE!” he screams.

“LET ME OUT!” he throws himself back against the seat. 

Lisa leans down, sticking her hand underneath the bottom of her seat and sits back up, turning the blade over in her hand before she stabs it in his thigh. 

Seungjae throws his head back and screams, the vein in his neck almost popping as Lisa twists the knife and sees blood start to pool out of the wound. She withdraws just as fast and sets it between her legs, turning up the volume on the radio as his cries grow louder.

* * *

Lisa parks the car a little ways away from the hotel. Seungjae is panting heavily, his mouth open as saliva drips down his chin and tears stain his face. Seun is still passed out in the backseat, so Lisa doesn’t worry about him as much. 

The street is practically deserted, with only a few people milling about outside and some standing in front of store shops smoking and drinking beer. 

Lisa steps out of the car first, pulling her jacket off of herself and moves over to the passenger side, pulling Seungjae out of the car and wrapping the jacket around him. Because it’s so dark outside, no one would be able to see the blood dripping down his leg or the bruises on his face. Lisa walks quickly, stepping inside the lobby and waving her hand quickly at the woman at the counter, before she’s making her way back up to the room. 

Lisa knocks quickly, and swipes her card through, pushing the door open and walking inside to see Jennie sitting up on the bed, shoveling a piece of pork in her mouth. When she catches sight of Lisa, she freezes, the food falling out of her mouth and smacking against the styrofoam plate. 

“Um…”

“Don’t worry,” Lisa says, kicking the door shut behind herself and dropping him on the floor. “He can barely walk, I stabbed him in the leg. I’ll be right back.”

Lisa steps out and walks back to her car, grabbing Seun out of the back and lifting his weight over her shoulder as she walks him back up to her room. 

Jennie isn’t sitting on the bed anymore, she’s standing near the window with one of the silver knives in her hand and her eyes widen in shock when Lisa opens the door again, pulling another man inside with her. 

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“I need you to help me,” Lisa says, stepping over both of the men and throwing open the door to the bathroom. She switches the light on and pulls back the shower curtain, making sure that the shower is empty before she walks back in the room. 

Jennie still hasn’t moved. She looks scared, honestly, just watching as Lisa picks Seungjae back up and drags him into the bathroom. She props him up and pushes him into the shower, lifting his arms up to the shower rod and reaching in her pocket to pull out a pair of zip ties. 

Lisa fixes his wrists to the rod and then walks back out to the bathroom, picking Seun up and sitting him against the bed. She reaches in her backpack for the rest of the zip ties and secures his wrist before grabbing the rope out and tying his legs together, along with arms behind his back. 

“Lisa…”

Lisa ignores her and leaves Seun, walking back into the bathroom and filling up one of the styrofoam cups with some of the sink water. When the water spills over her hand, Lisa turns the faucet off and whirls around, twisting Seungjae’s body in her direction before she throws the water in his face. 

Seungjae jerks awake, his body flailing as he gasps for breath and coughs up a mixture of blood and water. 

“You bitch!” he shouts. 

Lisa turns around and steps out of the bathroom, nearly colliding with Jennie, whose face is pale and her eyes shaking as she stares over Lisa’s shoulder at Seungjae. 

“What are you doing?” she breathes. 

“What does it look like I’m doing?” She gently moves Jennie out of the way, but the girl follows her around the room. 

When she bends down to grab her backpack, Jennie tries to touch her arm, but Lisa snatches her arm away and ignores the way that Jennie takes a step back. 

“Just help me,” she mutters. Lisa stands back up when she has what she needs, but Jennie is quicker, stepping right in her way and grabbing a hold of her arms.

“Just-” she starts. “Just talk to me, okay? Please just tell me what’s going on.”

And it must be the way her eyes look, like she’s legitimately scared and it makes Lisa uncomfortable because she doesn’t want it to be like this. She doesn’t want Jennie to be scared of  
her. No, that’s not what she wants. She doesn’t want her to be scared, she just wants her to help. 

“I want to kill both of these men, okay?” she tells her. “That man-” Lisa says pointing her hand in the direction of the bathroom. “That man shot my girlfriend in the back of her head. I saw him shoot her with my own eyes and I felt-” she said, squeezing her eyes shut as she tried to calm herself down. 

“I felt her blood on my face and he just left her there to die. They took everything from me.”

Jennie is searching for something in her face and Lisa doesn’t know what it is, but she must find it because she steps back and nervously wrings her hands in front of herself. 

“What do you want me to do?”

“Don’t do this if you’re uncomfortable. I’ll close the door or something-”

“I can do it,” she cuts Lisa off. “Just...just tell me, okay?”

Lisa swallows nervously and gestures to the sheet on the mattress with her chin. “Rip some of it- just enough to gag both of them with, okay?”

Jennie nods and steps out of the way as Lisa walks back into the bathroom. She sets the things down on the counter and looks over her shoulder as Seungjae stares at her with his one good eye. 

“Glad you could join me today.”

“Fuck you!” he spits. 

Lisa pulls her sleeves up to her elbow and ties her hair back into a ponytail, tucking a few loose hairs behind her ears and looking at herself in the mirror. Jennie steps slowly into the bathroom, holding out the sheet for her and Lisa thanks her quietly, moving to wrap it around Seungjae’s mouth. 

He struggles at first but Lisa eventually secures it before she steps back to survey it. 

She bends down to level herself with Seungjae and when he tries to twist away, she grabs him by his chin and stares straight into his eyes. 

“Remember me,” Lisa whispers. “And try to keep yourself awake, okay? I want you to know what it feels like to die.”

Lisa turns around and looks at Jennie, who’s already watching her. They don’t say anything to each other, but Lisa doesn’t really think that she needs to. Jennie only sighs and steps back, watching as Lisa steps forward and softly shuts the bathroom door in her face. 

She can hear the lock turn into place and Jennie surveys the man against the bed, his legs are mangled at a weird angle, and it doesn’t like he’ll be able to move. So Jennie only reaches for the remote on the bed, turning the volume up as high as she can. 

When she climbs back on the bed, she covers her ears as she hears the man start to scream.

* * *

Jennie doesn’t want to look at them, so she doesn’t. All she knows is that Lisa’s hands, her arms, and the front of her clothes are covered in blood. She holds her nose as she watches her scrub her hands and wipe what she can off of her face. 

When she pulls her T-shirt over her head, Jennie takes a step back and watches as she balls it up in her hands and throws it in the trash bin. 

The men are wrapped up in the sheets from the bed, blood staining through the blankets and pooling on the tile floor. 

“I’ll take a shower, okay?”

“Okay,” Jennie whispers. 

She walks away from the bathroom and spends the rest of her time sitting on the edge of her bed and trying to drown out the sound of the shower water running. She picks at the skin of her fingernail and nervously paces around the room, almost jumping out of her skin when Lisa pulls the door open suddenly. 

Jennie can tell where she had to scrub the blood off of her face and the rest of her body because her skin is red and raw from where the rag had to be used. She’s dressed in sweats and a hoodie, and her hair is still pulled back in a ponytail, away from her face. 

Jennie sits back down on the bed and Lisa hesitates before she does the same thing, taking a seat beside her. They don’t say anything to each other for a long time and Jennie wants to- feels like more than ever, that she should say something, but Lisa always speaks first. 

“I just need to know where he is,” Lisa says, briefly looking over at Jennie. “Just tell me where Jinwoo is. I have money. I can give you however much you need and if you need more, I’ll find more. Just take me to him and I’ll take you wherever you need to go. I’ll buy a plane ticket- a train ticket- whatever. Whatever you need,” Lisa shakes her head. “I just need to finish this.”

Jennie picks at the hem of her sweatshirt, rubbing her thumb over the material. She doesn’t answer Lisa right away. Instead, she takes a deep breath and crosses her ankles. 

“When I was fifteen,” she starts. “I was supposed to be at school, but I decided to ditch to go to the mall. I was supposed to meet up with my friends at the arcade because we wanted to play a new game that had just come out. So I left campus and I walked the normal route that I usually took. I remember the post office that I always walked past, and the convenience store that I bought chocolate milk from. I was _so_ close to the mall…”

Jennie looked up at the wall and Lisa waited for her to finish, giving her time to think about what it is that she wanted to say. 

“I had stopped to tie my shoes and someone just pulled me into a car. I tried to fight him off, but I couldn’t do shit,” she chuckled sadly. “All I remember is being held down in a car and screaming. I was screaming so loud, but no one could hear me.”

“I don’t even remember what happened. I just woke up and I was in a room with other girls. It was always a room and I just kept moving- I never stopped moving. I was put on trains, I went on cargo ships. I don’t even know how old I am. I stopped keeping track because I didn’t want to remember. I forced myself to not remember.”

“I don’t have anywhere to go. My parents were old when I was in high school. I wouldn’t even know where to look for them- I wouldn’t even know where to start. This is it for me.”

Jennie reclines back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling and Lisa looks over her shoulder at her. It’s easy to imagine what kind of girl Jennie would have been. She can see the way she would have laughed with her friends. She can imagine the way she smiled at a joke and how easy it must have been to be a teenager for her. 

Everything was always easy before. Before their innocence was taken away. Before their lives were irrevocably shattered. 

“Do you want to come with me?” Lisa murmurs. 

Jennie turns her eyes to her and they’re so dark- almost like malt chocolate and deep enough to feel like she’s looking right through you. 

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” she whispers. Lisa turns away and pulls at the drawstring of her pants. There’s still blood underneath her fingernails but she ignores it, reclining back against the bed and laying side-by-side with Jennie. 

She’s still staring at her and when Jennie reaches her hand out to touch her cheek, Lisa takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. 

"I don't know."

* * *

**2:34 a.m.**

The club is crowded. 

Lisa can hear the music all the way from the street and the lights that reflect off of the windows. Jennie walks ahead of her, confident of where she’s at and Lisa hates that she’s doing this, but she would have objected either way so there’s nothing she can do. 

The bouncer cards them at the door and Jennie grabs a hold of her arm, leading her inside the club as if it’s the most natural thing that she’s ever done. 

The inside is dark and crowded. There are colored lights that spill across the dance floor and reflect off the walls in shades of green, red, orange, and yellow. There’s a DJ booth set up along the opposite side of the room and the music is so loud that Lisa can barely hear Jennie as she whispers something in her ear and points to a small booth on the other side. The bar is crowded and everyone is standing next to each other, throwing shots back and laughing loudly as they talk amongst each other. Jennie grabs her wrist and leads her up a small flight of steps until they can weave through people and slip into the booth. 

Underneath the lights, Jennie looks up at her and Lisa folds her hands on top of the table. “Are you okay?”

Jennie nods and pushes her hair over her shoulder. “I’m okay. There’s a VIP booth upstairs,” she gestures with her chin. “We have to go up there. That’s where Jinwoo stays when he comes to the club. He brings some of the girls here and passes them around to his friends.”

Lisa looks up at the box that Jennie’s referring to and she can see men moving around, some are standing up and talking with bottles in their hands, and others are seated, laughing with girls on their laps. 

“He’s there?”

“Yeah,” Jennie whispers. 

“How do we get up there?”

“You have to be invited up there. Otherwise, you can’t enter. We have to go to the dance floor. He’ll recognize me automatically and demand that I be taken upstairs. Remember, Jinwoo doesn’t let his girls go very far.”

Lisa licks her lips and stares at Jennie as she nervously messes with her fingers. “We don’t have to do this…”

“I know,” she murmurs. “And I appreciate that, but I’m okay. Just follow my lead, alright? Just follow me.”

Jennie slides over and stands up from the booth, holding her hand out for Lisa to take and she doesn’t even hesitate. She laces their fingers together and follows Jennie as they walk back down the steps and towards the dance floor. Jennie finds a spot directly in the center of the dance floor, somewhere where the lights hit them and the crowd isn’t so tightly packed against each other. 

The music is roaring through her ears and Lisa falls into place behind her as Jennie looks up at the box and pulls Lisa’s hands around her so her palms rest against her waist. 

“Just dance,” she says into her ear. “Touch me as much as you want, it’s okay.”

Lisa doesn’t at first. She feels immobile among the club goers, but Jennie slips into character so easily. The dress that they had wrangled off the mannequin was cheap, but it was enough for Jennie to blend in with the other people and the role that she had spent years masking herself underneath. It’s turquoise and molded to her frame, with one sleeve and a slit all the way up to the middle of her thigh. 

It glitters underneath the lights and when she turns around, Lisa finds her eyes and they look the same as when she stared at her as they laid back on the bed. 

Jennie strokes the hair at the back of her neck and angles her head down, Lisa’s chin fitting perfectly in the space of her shoulder and her jaw. There’s no coordination to the way they move, but Jennie is easy, she’s so easy to push and pull, that Lisa finds her falling into synch with every step that she takes. 

Their bodies sway from side to side and Lisa’s hands travel up the length of her back and down her sides, before spinning her around. With the way they’re pressed up against each other, Jennie tugs on her hair, so she can hear her as she breathes against her cheek. 

“Keep dancing.”

Lisa nods and pulls her closer, her arms almost encircling her because she’s so tiny. Her hands run up the inside of her thigh and at this point, the music doesn’t even matter because they’re grinding up against the other. When Jennie turns back around, she makes eye contact with Lisa and smiles in what should be a comforting manner, but it looks nervous. So Lisa pulls her close and rubs her back, feeling the material of the dress underneath her skin and the way her heart beats against her palm. Before she can even say something to her, someone roughly grabs her by the back of her jacket, nearly wrenching her out of Jennie’s grasp.

“What the fuck?!” she yelps. 

“Jinwoo is looking for you!”

The man shoves her away, but Lisa regains her footing and grabs a hold of Jennie by her wrist, yanking her over to her side as the man glares at the both of them. 

“Where the fuck have you been?”

Jennie doesn’t answer him, but she grabs a hold of Lisa’s hand and squeezes it hard. 

“Go upstairs,” he gestures with his chin. “He wants to see you.”

Jennie moves to step away, dragging Lisa with her and the man doesn’t say anything, just follows closely behind as they make their way upstairs to the VIP box. The blinds are drawn and the lights lowered, effectively blocking out any view into the VIP box. 

The room is separated into different sections. It’s the first thing that Lisa notices when the door slides open and the music from the club is muted from the inside. The only person inside the VIP box is the man that’s pouring himself a drink at the mini bar set up on the other side. He looks exactly the same as the picture that Jisoo had shown her on the computer.  
His hair is still blond and when he finally turns around, Lisa sees the face that haunted her years. She sees the face of the man that took her away from everything. She sees the man that taught her how to hold a gun, that taught her how to twist a knife inside of someone so that they wouldn’t be able to walk every again. 

Jennie’s fingernails dig into her hand and she has to remember that they both share the same trauma with this man. That although Lisa was taught how to kill someone, Jennie was paraded around like an animal- like property that someone could pick for their choosing and used in anyway that they wanted to. 

He lifts the glass of scotch up to his lips and raises an eyebrow at Jennie. 

“I have been looking everywhere for you,” he murmurs. “The massage parlor is a mess and you were nowhere to be found- none of my girls were.”

The way the word _‘my’_ rolls off his tongue sounds sinister. As if he’s owned things for so long that he doesn’t know another way to speak. 

“Who's your friend?” he gestures with his glass towards Lisa. 

When he looks over her, Lisa realizes suddenly that he doesn’t remember her. Although she could trace his features from memory alone and she could remember the way he walked, the way he smiled when he was satisfied, and the sound of his voice when he was angry. 

It was incredible the way victims could remember everything about their abuser, but the perpetrator just saw them as another body-another casualty in their quest for satisfaction. 

“Did you take my girl?” he asks. 

He takes another sip from his glass and sets it down on the table. “Who the fuck do you think you are? Do you know that this is a business?”

He takes a step forward and Lisa wants to shrink back. She wants to make herself small because she remembers being beat within an inch of her life whenever she failed. She can remember the way Jinwoo had pistol whipped her across the face and the way she was forced to stand outside all night until she soiled herself because she refused to shoot a dog in the head. 

But she can’t shrink. She has no reason to shrink anymore. She’s not that 15 year old girl anymore. She’s not anything anymore. She’s not scared of him anymore. 

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” Lisa asks him. “Your girl? Your girl?! You stole her!”

Lisa lets go of her hand and Jennie steps back, like she needs to hide herself and Lisa doesn’t mind angling her body so she’s pushed behind her. 

“You don’t own any of these fucking girls! You stole them!”

Jinwoo laughs; he actually laughs out loud. Some of the scotch sloshes out of the cup and over his hand, but Lisa doesn’t wait. She reaches into the pocket of her jacket and pulls out the photos that they had taken. She tosses them across the room and they land in a pile at his feet. 

Jinwoo stops laughing and bends down, picking the photos up and looking through them carefully. They’re all of his men- the ones that Lisa had taken care of at the massage parlor and Seun and Seungjae each bundled up in sheets in the bathroom. 

He stares at it for a long time, long enough that when he finally looks up, he crumples it between his hands and throws it to the ground. 

“Who the hell are you?!”

“It doesn’t matter who I am,” Lisa murmurs. 

Jinwoo chuckles, shaking his head and turns around, walking back over to the couch and taking a seat. He spreads his legs out and folds his hands in his lap. His face is straight but she can see the lines where he’s aged and she can see the reflection of herself in his eyes. She can see everything. 

“What did you come here for, hm? Revenge? Is that what this is about? Did you come back for your girlfriend?”

He touches his lips with his fingers, almost like he has to think about what he has to say, but Lisa shakes her head. 

“I came to say that it’s nice to see you again.”

Jinwoo opens his mouth to respond, but Lisa is faster, drawing the blade out of her pocket and flinging it at his arm. The knife pierces his flesh, sliding through and pinning him to the couch. His mouth opens in a silent scream, but Lisa is already across the room, jamming the knife even further through his arm as he shouts and tries to make a grab for her. Lisa ducks away and jumps over the side of the couch, tilting his head upwards as she makes eye contact with Jennie. The other girl sets her mouth in a straight line, but she walks over, her gait smooth and calculated, like she’s spent years learning how to walk over and over again. 

Lisa doesn’t even have to tell her what to do. She simply grabs the bottle of scotch off the shelf and smashes it against the table. Part of the glass breaks off, her hand covered in alcohol, as she turns back around and shows the pointed edge to her. 

The glass glints underneath the lights and when she climbs in his lap, it’s almost second nature. She strokes the side of his face, pushing his hair behind his ears and leaning down to rub her cheeks against his own. The act is so tender that Lisa stares at her, both of their gazes finding each other when Jennie finally sits back up. 

“You fucking slut!” he shouts and Lisa grabs the blade, twisting it further into his arm as he screams. 

He spits in her face, but Jennie simply wipes it off, her fingers tilting his chin upwards so he’s staring directly at her. 

“Your favorite slut,” she whispers and draws her arm back before stabbing the end of the bottle into his neck. Blood squirts out across her face and Jinwoo chokes, his body spasming as he jerks in place and Jennie keeps stabbing him in his neck, over and over again. 

When the neck of the bottle breaks off in her hand, Jennie climbs off of his lap and tosses it onto his lap. Lisa comes back around the couch and stares at his body. His head is nearly detached from his neck and there’s so much blood that his dress shirt practically looks red. 

Jennie tugs on her wrist and Lisa stares at her, looking at the blood across her face and it reminds her of when she felt Chaeyoung’s blood on her own skin. She thumbs away at it, smearing some of it in the process, but Jennie simply stares at her, not telling her to stop. 

“Where do you want to go?”

Lisa turns back around and stares at Jinwoo’s body. His eyes are still open, but she can tell that he’s dead and the smell of his blood makes her close her eyes. 

“Wherever you want to go.”

* * *

_"Do I make you happy?"_

_Chaeyoung looks up from the phone in her hand and stares at Lisa, her eyebrow raising in confusion. "What?"_

_"It's just-"_

_She sighs and stands up, moving around the table to tilt her head up so she can really look at her._

_"Are you happy, Chae?"_

_She snorts and runs her finger down the length of Lisa's arm, her hand grabbing a hold of her own and lacing their fingers together._

_"Of course, I'm happy," she sighs. "You make me feel safe. You make me feel like everything's gonna be okay."_

* * *

Lisa looks up at boarding gate, adjusting her face mask when she sees Jennie walk out of the bathroom. She comes back to her seat and Lisa takes her hand, their fingers fitting into place as Jennie lays her head against her shoulder. There are other passengers seated in the boarding area, some kids running around from the desk and back to their parents. An elderly couple is sharing a newspaper and some older individuals are either sleep or texting someone on their phone. 

Lisa stares down at the date on their ticket. It's January 16th and she shows it to Jennie, pointing at the date across the top. 

"Maybe that can be your new birthday."

Jennie chuckles underneath her breath. She doesn't object to it, but she stares at the date for a long minute, her throat bobbing as she wipes her eyes. Lisa doesn't want her to cry, though. She only wants her to be okay.

_Flight 345 Seoul, South Korea to New York, New York_

_Calling all First Class Passengers to begin boarding_

Lisa nudges Jennie gently and helps her stand up as they grab their bags and walk over to join the line of other passengers lining up. 

"It's gonna be okay," she whispers to Jennie. 

The other girl squeezes her hand and pulls her arm into her side. Her grip is warm and it settles something deep down inside of Lisa's chest that she didn't know was missing. 

"I know," she nods and when Jennie brushes her lips across Lisa's knuckles, it feels like a promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was originally supposed to be up on the 29th, but unfortunately I couldn't get it out on time. I really wanted to make this story as best as possible, so I really took my time with this and I'm so so happy for all of your comments and the time that you guys take to read this. thank you guys so much and I hope you guys enjoyed it. ❤️


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